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HE EXCUR. 
BOOK- LOVER 



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COPYRIGHT DEFOSSTi 



THE EXCURSIONS OF A 
BOOK-LOVER 

BEING PAPERS ON LITERARY 
THEMES 

BY 
FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN 

M 

"Dearly beloved old pigskin tomes I 
Of dingy hue — old bookish darlings I 
Oh cluster ever round my rooms, 
And banish strifes, disputes, and snarlings." 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH &r COMPANY 

1910 



tf33 



Copyright, 19 10 
Sherman French & Company 



<gC!.A26180 



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TO 

PERSIS 

MY BELOVED WIFE 

IN GLAD REMEMBRANCE OP 

A HAPPY MARRIED LIFE 



THIS book is precisely what its 
name indicates. The papers 
of which it is composed represent 
the many pleasant evenings which 
a Book-lover has passed in delight- 
ful association with what an Eng- 
lish poet has called "the sweet 
consolers of the mind." There is 
no plan or special purpose in the 
arrangement. The Excursionist's 
migrations were not, all of them, 
" from the blue bed to the brown." 
He visited the libraries of his 
friends where he found not only 
the goodly fellowship of many rare 
volumes, but the companionship of 
kindred souls, and the joy of a 
fragrant cigar. The gladness of 
many evenings is in these pages. 

F. R. M. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. BOOKS l 

II. AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE . . 39 

III. LITERARY FAME 53 

IV. BOOK DEDICATIONS .... 83 
V. AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS . .Ill 

VI. ETHAN BRAND 129 

VII. THE MAN OF GENIUS . ... 153 

VIII. THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK . 179 

IX. SHAKSPEARE'S BONES ... 213 

X. HOLOGRAPHS 235 

XI. AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY . 275 



I 

BOOKS 



Collegian. 

Did you, ere we departed from the college, 
O'erlook my library? 

Servant. 

Yes, sir; and I find 
Although you tell me learning is immortal, 
The paper and the parchment 'tis contain'd in, 
Savours of much mortality. 
The moths have eaten more 
Authentic learning than would richly furnish 
A hundred country pedants ; yet the wormes 
Are not one letter wiser. 

— Glapthorn's "Wit in a Constable." 



BOOKS 



"And I would urge upon every young man, as 
the beginning of his due and wise provision for 
his household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the 
severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and 
steadily — however slowly — increasing series of 
books for use through life ; making his little library, 
of all the furniture in his room, the most studied 
and decorative piece; every volume having its as- 
signed place, like a little statue in its niche, and 
one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the chil- 
dren of the house being how to turn the pages of 
their own literary possessions lightly and delib- 
erately, with no chance of tearing or dog's ears." 

John Ruskin. 

NO, Mr. Ruskin, the man who would make of 
books lasting and intimate friends will 
never proceed in the way you recommend. The 
man who truly loves good books will draw them 
to himself by a subtile, mysterious, and inde- 
scribable attraction. Books will not decorate his 
shelves, "each volume having its assigned place, 
like a little statue in its niche," but, like friends, 
they will gather around him in affectionate com- 
panionship. They will commune with him. Be- 
tween him and them there will be absolutely no 
ceremony. He will attract such books as give 
him pleasure, and the night will be turned into 
day with the splendor of their hallowed fellow- 
ship. Charles Lamb, beloved of all book-lovers, 



2 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

used sometimes to kiss the quaint and curious vol- 
umes that, open upon his desk, awaited his com- 
ing. They were to him in no wise like little 
statues. They were his dearest friends. Thus 
tenderly the author of Elia discourses of a noble 
library : 

"It seems as though all the souls of all the 
writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these 
Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormi- 
tory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to 
profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could 
as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learn- 
ing, walking amid their foliage, and the odour of 
their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the 
fruit bloom of those sciential apples which grew 
amid the happy orchard." 

When you know a man's enemies, you know as 
well something of his character. The hostility of 
the right man is an honor not to be despised. In 
the same way one may form some opinion of a 
book by the aversions which it awakens. Books, 
like their readers, have their own special enemies, 
and it would be by no means a difficult task to 
single out and name at least one or two famous 
works that have created no small amount of 
hatred and contention. But there are certain 
general enemies that in all lands and in every age 
attack good books of every kind, and that not in- 
frequently menace literature itself. An able 
author whose friendship I have long enjoyed, but 
whose name it would be a breach of confidence to 
disclose, told me that he always numbered among 



BOOKS 3 

the worst enemies of literature the ordinary pub- 
lisher. I give his words as I remember them: 

"The publisher of such cheap books as are sold 
on railroad trains, and are greedily devoured on 
the verandas of fashionable hotels and public 
houses where idlers and pleasure-seekers gather — 
the publisher of such books is certainly to be re- 
garded as one of the most dangerous of all the re- 
morseless enemies that books of whatever kind may 
have. He prints for the dollars they bring him 
novels of no worth whatever, and that crowd from 
every available place such books as inform the mind 
and arouse the mental energies. He prints poor 
fiction by the cord as men saw hickory logs. There 
is, however, this important difference: the wood is 
reserved for merry flames that leap and dance upon 
the hearth, shedding warmth and cheer through 
long winter evenings, while, since the day when 
the Holy Inquisition went out of business, books 
(even the worst of them) have escaped such con- 
suming and purifying fires. Yet now and then 
some large and pretentious printing establishment, 
by rare good fortune, goes up in flame and smoke; 
and a worse than worthless stock of misused paper 
sheds upon our dark world for one brief hour the 
only effulgence it is capable of diffusing. The mer- 
cenary publisher is but a shade less objectionable 
than the mercenary clergyman. He is the evil 
genius of the world of letters. Not a book of real 
value will he touch, and not an unknown writer of 
ability will he help to name or fortune." 

It may be that my friend is too severe in his 
judgment, and uncharitable in his somewhat 
sweeping accusations. Yet when every allow- 
ance has been made, and the exceptional pub- 



4 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Ushers have been suitably acknowledged and com- 
mended, is there not a substantial foundation of 
truth beneath the seemingly harsh indictment? 
Some time ago I made for my own amusement a 
list of such unusually good books as I could think 
of that had been "turned down" by more than one 
publisher of excellent standing before at last they 
came into the hands of men who had courage and 
enterprise. The list was at once surprising and 
humiliating. It included many of the best and 
most famous of the books that will live. William 
R. Alger's "History of the Doctrine of a Future 
Life," with a wonderful catalogue of more than 
five thousand works, in many languages, relat- 
ing to the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul, 
and having an Appendix giving an exhaustive 
list of books treating of "the souls of brutes," has 
now passed through fifteen editions. The author 
gave ten years of hard study to the monumental 
work, and when the book was completed there 
was not a publisher in all the land who would give 
it the slightest consideration. The book would 
have remained unpublished had not Mr. George 
W. Childs, who was applied to, discovered its im- 
portance. Mr. Childs would not at first believe 
that there could be any difficulty in obtaining a 
publisher, but when he was made aware of the 
situation he at once enabled the author to give 
his great work to the world. It would not be dif- 
ficult to cite many other cases which lend quite as 
forcible an endorsement to my friend's seemingly 






BOOKS 5 

severe arraignment of the publishing fraternity. 
The newspaper, so it seems to me, might be 
counted in with the enemies of good books. Not 
every periodical is to be classed with "the workers 
of iniquity." There are worthy papers and 
magazines, though there are fewer of these than 
most men believe. Yet it is true that thousands 
of journals are without concealment the foes of 
whatever is noble and good in the great world of 
letters. The man of affairs who might by some 
acquaintance with worthy books save himself from 
being buried alive beneath all that is sordid and 
vulgar, is literally thrust into his grave with the 
breath of life still in his body by mercenary edi- 
tors who print and circulate countless pages of 
rubbish. These, not content with slaughtering 
the language in which they profess to print their 
papers, destroy as well the soul of all high think- 
ing. Wendell Phillips wrote many years ago: 

"It is momentous, yes, a fearful truth, that the 
millions have no literature, no school, and almost 
no pulpit but the press. Not one in ten reads 
books. But every one of us, except the very few 
helpless poor, poisons himself every day with a 
newspaper. It is parent, school, college, pulpit, 
theatre,- example, counselor, all in one. Every 
drop of our blood is colored by it. Let me make 
the newspapers, and I care not who makes the reli- 
gion or the laws." 

Never were truer words uttered or printed. 
The newspaper-habit, like the opium-habit and 
the thirst for alcohol, is a great national evil. 



6 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Could about two-thirds of the journals now pub- 
lished be, by some stroke of magic wand, swept 
into the already overcrowded United States 
Pharmacopoeia, to be henceforth dispensed only 
upon the issuance of a physician's prescription, 
as are other and less dangerous poisons, it may 
be there would be few of the poorer journals pub- 
lished, but we should, beyond doubt, have 
stronger minds, purer morals, and better books. 

Another enemy of good books is the public 
library. Not every library is to be counted in 
with the foes of our best literature. No sane man 
could wish to suppress the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford, the Emmanuel Library at Cambridge, or 
the Library of Harvard University. For these 
let us be ever thankful! But think for a brief 
moment of the Library of Congress at Washing- 
ton — that vast dumping ground for thousands 
upon thousands of copyrighted books ! 

In England few persons purchase books. Read- 
ers borrow from circulating libraries. In 
America things are different. We like to own 
our books. One may see in even the open coun- 
try little libraries that belong to men and women 
of humble station and slender purse. We write 
our names in our books, and scribble upon their 
margins with a proud feeling of ownership. The 
books belong in our homes, and are not "to be 
returned." In a very true sense they are friends 
and companions. But alas! how often they are 
friends no wise reader can afford to choose. 



BOOKS 7 

Books are cheap. The old-bookman sells them 
by the bushel. A dime will buy twenty-four hours' 
worth of reading, such as it is, allowing for skip- 
ping. Cheap literature is a national evil. Fewer 
books and better ones are needed. 

"I have a picture hanging in my library/' wrote 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Atlantic 
Monthly, "a lithograph, of which many of my read- 
ers may have seen copies. It represents a gray- 
haired old book-lover at the top of a long flight of 
steps. He finds himself in clover, so to speak, 
among rare old editions, books he has longed to 
look upon and never seen before, rarities, precious 
old volumes, incunabula, cradle-books, printed 
while the art was in its infancy — its glorious in- 
fancy, for it was born a giant. The old book-worm 
is so intoxicated with the sight and handling of the 
priceless treasures, that he cannot bear to put one 
of the volumes back after he has taken it from the 
shelf. So there he stands — one book open in his 
hands, a volume under each arm, and one or more 
between his legs — loaded with as many as he can 
possibly hold at the same time. Now, that is just 
the way in which the extreme form of book-hunger 
shows itself in the reader whose appetite has be- 
come over-developed. He wants to read so many 
books that he over-crams himself with the crude 
materials of knowledge, which become knowledge 
only when the mental digestion has time to assimi- 
late them." 

I doubt much if a general and indiscriminate 
book-hunger is to be desired. ''Bibliophagia" is 
a new word, and many good scholars are far from 
pleased when they see it in print ; yet it has come 



8 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

to remain with us, and soon or late every diction- 
ary in our language will hail its arrival and bid 
it welcome. Book-hunger is not exactly like the 
hunger one has for a joint of beef; it is less 
gross, but in no wise less rapacious. Every book- 
seller must be on his guard against the man who 
steals books, not that he may sell them, but that 
he may own them. The literary and book-loving 
thief knows precisely what he wants, and he is a 
good judge of values. The pockets of his coat 
are constructed with a view to frequent visits to 
the second-hand bookseller, whose dusty shelves 
have a charm for those who understand such mat- 
ters that no mere Philistine can ever comprehend. 
It is astonishing how much the literary thief can 
stow away in safe places. When he is so unfor- 
tunate as to be caught, shame does not greatly 
disturb him. He is far more anxious about the 
fate of his plunder than he is about that of his 
person. 

In the city of Albany, where gather politicians 
great and small from every corner of the Empire 
State, and where I have been so fortunate as to 
live for more than a dozen happy 3 T ears, "Ye Olde 
Booke Man" is one Joseph McDonough, a prince 
among the mighty and sagacious traders in rare 
and curious books from lands far and near. On 
his sacred shelves the dust of learning is soft and 
deep, and before one is aware of the danger, his 
most holy resolutions are reduced to even finer 
dust. Over that seductive and dangerous store- 



BOOKS 9 

house of knowledge the public authorities should 
compel the good Joseph to inscribe for the protec- 
tion of feeble wills and debilitated purses the 
warning of Scripture, "Lead us not into tempta- 
tion." Book-catalogues are seldom regarded as 
a part of the body of literature, and yet surely 
some such catalogues are genuine contributions to 
that department of polite literature we call 
belles-lettres. What can be more delightful than 
a well printed catalogue, on good paper, with 
wide margins. Some such are rendered still more 
attractive by the insertion of finely executed 
prints of sumptuous bindings and dainty tail- 
pieces. Many catalogues are as well composed 
as they are printed, and so it comes to pass that 
the bookseller is not infrequently a bookmaker 
whose contributions to the library are worthy of 
preservation. How a well-prepared catalogue 
stimulates the hunger for good books! This the 
trained bookseller knows full well, and he pon- 
ders upon the result as he constructs the capti- 
vating pages. 

In this connection it may be interesting to note 
that there have been men who, under pressure 
from those who did not wish them well, actually 
devoured in a literal and not in a figurative sense 
the printed page. Some time ago the Scientific 
American gave its readers an account of the re- 
markable meals of certain unfortunate men: 

In 1370 Barnabo Visconti compelled two Papal 
delegates to eat the bull of excommunication 



10 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

which they had brought him, together with its 
silken cord and leaden seal. As the bull was writ- 
ten on parchment, not paper, it was all the more 
difficult to digest. 

A similar anecdote was related by Oelrich in his 
"Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum et Librorum 
Fatis," (1756), of an Austrian general who had 
signed a note for two thousand florins, and was 
compelled by his creditor, when it fell due, to eat 
it. 

A Scandinavian writer, the author of a politi- 
cal book, was compelled to choose between being 
beheaded or eating his manuscript boiled in broth. 

Isaac Volmar, who wrote some spicy satires 
against Bernard, Duke of Saxony, was not al- 
lowed the courtesy of the kitchen, but was forced 
to swallow his literary productions uncooked. 

Still worse was the fate of Philip Oldenburger, 
a jurist of great renown, who was condemned not 
only to eat a pamphlet of his writing, but also 
to be flogged during his repast, with orders that 
the flogging should not cease until he had swal- 
lowed the last crumb. 

We cannot think such dinners good for diges- 
tion, but perhaps they were not so distasteful as 
at first glance they appear. We do remember that 
a book-lover in the wild west wished that after his 
death his body might be opened, and that under 
his ribs, close to his heart, there might be stowed 
away a certain little book that he had treasured 
through many long years. Edwards, the book 



BOOKS 11 

collector, left written instructions with regard to 
his coffin. It was to be made out of some of the 
strong shelves of his library. Many an author 
would like to have one or two of his books laid 
upon his coffin, or could wish that at his funeral 
some choice page from his best work might be 
read by a literary friend. At the funeral of 
Edmund Clarence Stedman the Rev. Dr. Van 
Dyke read verses of his own making in honor of 
the dead. They were good, but doubtless all who 
were present would have much preferred to hear 
some tender and gracious lines penned by the dead 
singer. A stereotyped service in which a be- 
gowned priest is the thing most conspicuous, and 
his metallic voice the sound most distinctly re- 
membered, is hardly the kind of service an artis- 
tic mind would find pleasure in contemplating. 
The Protestant Episcopal burial service, much 
lauded in certain quarters, is well adapted to the 
commonplace ministrations of an ordinary priest, 
but its fixed and unalterable sentences and sonor- 
ous but insipid platitudes are poorly adjusted to 
finer needs. When they laid to rest the gifted and 
gentle Whittier, Mr. Stedman spoke with deep 
feeling and "a trained artist's judgment," and 
those who heard his address felt that the right 
word had been spoken. 

In earlier ages, upon funeral occasions, noble 
and beautiful words were uttered by men who 
voiced the deep feeling of a true heart. We turn 
the page yellowed with time, and come to the 



12 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"doleful complaints" of Sir Ector de Moris over 
the dead Sir Launcelot. What manly grief and 
noble speech! The venerable chronicler tells us: 

"And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, 
and his helm from him; and when he beheld Sir 
Launcelot's visage, he fell down in a swoon; and 
when he awoke, it were hard for any tongue to 
tell the doleful complaints that he made for his 
brother. Ah! Sir Launcelot/ said he, 'thou wert 
head of all Christian knights. And now I dare 
say,' said Sir Ector, 'that Sir Launcelot, there thou 
liest, thou wert never matched of any earthly 
knight's hands; and thou wert the courtliest knight 
that ever bear shield; and thou wert the truest 
friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and 
thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever 
loved woman, and thou wert the kindest man that 
ever struck with sword; and thou wert the good- 
liest person that ever came among press of knights ; 
and thou wert the meekest man, and the gentlest, 
that ever eat in hall among ladies; and thou wert 
the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put 
spear in the rest.' " 

Blessed is the man who lives in holy fellow- 
ship with great and noble books. His is a world 
upon which no evil genius may breathe the blight 
of a selfish and unlovely spirit. Angels wait 
upon him day and night. His solitude is peopled 
with heavenly companionship. The highest de- 
light possible to man is his. Before him open the 
gates of Paradise. 



BOOKS 13 

II 

One of the most interesting of the many 
books that from a Romish point of view ex- 
plain the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church 
is "The Mass and Vestments of the Catholic 
Church," by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor John 
Walsh, a learned and conscientious priest who 
ministers to St. Mary's Church in the city of 
Troy, N. Y. The book is all the more interesting 
as well as astonishing because of the unquestioned 
piety and unusual frankness of the author. Theo- 
logians are not as a class conspicuously honest. 
The amount of hedging and dodging encoun- 
tered in an ordinary book on divinity or on 
church history and public worship is enough to 
demolish the faith of the stoutest believer. If a 
man would retain the sweet and simple faith of 
his early days he should leave untouched the 
apologetics of every school, and keep himself un- 
spotted from theological seminaries. Walsh has 
given the world a remarkable book. The man 
himself is profoundly honest. He believes with- 
out question or reservation of any kind all the 
astonishing puerilities and trivialities of the great 
religious organization of which he is a repre- 
sentative. And speaking as he does, with author- 
ity, he endorses and recommends to his fellowmen 
what he himself holds to be true. He does not 
see that the very sincerity which he manifests 
renders only the more absurd the astonishing 
things which he represents to be of importance 



14 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

in the sight of the Creator of heaven and earth. 
That the self-existent and eternal Spirit "whose 
presence bright all space doth occupy" could care 
anything about the proportion of alcohol al- 
lowed in the wine set apart for sacramental pur- 
poses, or that it could be of any consequence to 
that Spirit, whether raisins steeped in water 
and crushed in a wine press for Eucharistic pur- 
poses were to be accounted true wine, seems to me 
a thing beyond the belief of a sound mind. Think 
of a God answering to the Westminster Assem- 
bly's definition of Deity — "a Spirit, infinite, eter- 
nal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, 
power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" — 
think of such a God concerning Himself about a 
beeswax candle or taking the slightest interest in 
the head-covering of ecclesiastics. Yet here is a 
learned and sincere man who thinks these things 
are worth writing about, and who believes that 
the Eternal One of whom we can have no adequate 
conception gives thought to such trivialities. 

I honor the man who in an age like this has a 
real faith, and who stands by it under all circum- 
stances, but I can have no personal interest in a 
faith that is not reasonable. Some kind of an- 
thropomorphism we must have. The sacred 
writings of all lands represent the Eternal Spirit 
as possessed of a body, and they ascribe to Him 
such physical parts and acts as are proper to man. 
He is said to hear, speak, come and go. He has 
eyes, mouth, ears, hands and feet. But all this is 



BOOKS 15 

represented as analogy. Fundamental knowledge 
of God as He is in and of Himself, and apart 
from all His creatures, no man may have. I must 
think of Him under some form or shape, and yet 
that form or shape need not belittle His nature. 
That is to say, it need not fall below the thought 
and imagination of a cultivated mind. I must 
think of Him as a person, though an infinite per- 
son (attaching to the term its natural meaning) 
is a self -contradictory phrase. But I am not re- 
duced to the necessity of representing Him as an 
arranger of altar-lights and a fitter of priests' 
caps. The anthropomorphism may be at least 
abreast of the best there is in man and the age. 

More and more we are coming to think of God 
as inseparably associated with nature, as working 
with it and through it. We would not undervalue 
the Divine revelation in man — "the Word was 
made flesh" — but modern science has disclosed 
Him in nature with new power and beauty. This 
is a noble view of His presence and activity. In 
the blush of the morning and in the evening 
breeze He is present. In Him as in a mirror is 
reflected the vast universe. You may call this 
Pantheism if you will, but it remains a noble 
thought of the Creator. The poet apparels it in 
something of its own beauty in "Tintern Abbey" : 

"I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 



16 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit which impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

Perhaps there is a still higher reverence — a rev- 
erence that refuses to discuss what must forever 
transcend all human knowledge. Have we rea- 
son to believe that God bears any real resem- 
blance to our thought of Him? Is there any de- 
scription that describes Him? The Hebrew 
Scriptures tell us that "His thoughts are not as 
our thoughts;" that "His ways are past finding 
out." No name suffices for Him, nor can any 
confession encircle Him. 

"Who dares express Him? 
And who confess Him, 
Saying, I do believe? 
A man's heart bearing, 
What man has the daring 
To say: I acknowledge Him not? 
The All-enfolder, 
The All-upholder, 
Enfolds, upholds He not 
Thee, me, Himself?" 

The Incomprehensible must so remain. Over 
the vast chasm that sunders the Infinite from the 
finite no bridge may spring its arch. If I can 
with my hands make no graven image, am I to 
make with my mind another image less gross but 
perhaps not less remote from the unseen Pres- 



BOOKS 17 

ence? Is there not also this danger, that my life 
shall be conformed to a pattern having no resem- 
blance to what I would copy ? My thought as such 
is ductile and tractable, but may it not harden 
into unyielding dogma? Riding over the hills 
beyond the little village of Altamont, I saw 
builded into the walls that mark off different 
farms and that separate them from the highway, 
certain stones that contain shells. Once those 
stones were soft mud on the bottom of a pre-his- 
toric ocean. The wet earth, lifted above the water 
by some tremendous cosmic unheaval, hardened 
into enduring stone, and there today are the 
shells that long ages ago held living creatures. 

Other things than mud harden, and become firm, 
solid, and compact. In man conduct tends in the 
direction of character, and mental habits become 
permanent. Opinions solidify into doctrines, and 
these after a time we no longer recognize as bone 
of our bone and flesh of our flesh — they seem to 
us Divine, and it comes to pass that we fall down 
and worship them. Our only safety is to be found 
in the cultivation of an open mind ever ready to 
welcome and entertain truth from whatever quar- 
ter. 

Narrow and puerile ideas of the Divine Pres- 
ence destroy the power of that Presence. The 
God who concerns Himself with religious trifles 
and trinkets will be found to concern Himself 
with nothing more important. Here lies the 
danger of every kind of Ritualism. The toy and 



18 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

the child go together, alike in cradle and pew. 
Vestments, processions, incense, altar-cloth, mitre, 
the pastoral staff, and candles — what are these but 
the sacred tops, balls, and kites of children who 
long ago should have developed into full-grown 
men and women? 

This thought of God as transcending all hu- 
man relationships, — as not only more than man, 
but different from him in every way, — was the 
highest thought of the Greek mind. iEschylus 
wrote of Zeus, "He exists in Himself." Solon in- 
voked Zeus as "the source of life and death." 
Thus ran the ancient Dodonian inscription accord- 
ing to Pausanias, "Zeus was, and is, and is to be." 
Everywhere in ancient literature we are charmed 
and captivated by this wonderful thought of God 
which represents Him as "all in all." This was 
the great message of the Hebrew Scriptures, 
"God is not a man." He was "The Self-existent 
One" — He was Jahveh — "I am that I am." And 
Jesus taught in the same direction, "God is a 
spirit, and they that worship Him must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth." Everywhere in the 
Hebrew writings, and in the words of Jesus, is 
this grandeur of inaccessible solitude lighted by 
an Infinite Love. Is it not, then, pitiable that 
God should be represented by any church, creed, 
or book as not only a man, but as a trivial man, — 
one who concerns himself with ecclesiastical re- 
galia, candles, and things of that kind? 



BOOKS 19 

III 

This is the inscription which Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale makes Philip Nolan ask to have 
cut into the stone that was to preserve his 
memory, and with it the delightful writer brings 
to an end his striking and strange story of "The 
Man Without a Country." 

IN MEMORY OF 
PHILIP NOLAN, 

LIEUTENANT 

IN THE ARMY OF 

THE UNITED STATES. 

" He loved his country as no other man has loved her ; 
but no man deserved less at her hands." 

Nonsense ! sheer nonsense, good Dr. Hale ! No 
sane man could love such a country as you have 
described — a country that could treat any man, 
to say nothing of one of its own soldiers, in the 
way you have represented the United States as 
having treated Philip Nolan in the story of which 
we are now writing. Love for such a country 
would be immoral, were it possible, and possible 
it certainly is not. Nolan was a young officer 
who in a moment of exasperation cried out: 
"Damn the United States ! I wish I may never 
hear of the United States again!" The wish, if 
it really was a wish, was beyond question not 
patriotic, and "damn" is not exactly a Sunday 
School word. Perhaps the young man might 
have been punished as a traitor, but in that case, 
while the United States would have gained no 
glory, we should be the losers of a charming 



20 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

story. Think of allowing a foolish court-martial 
to wipe out "The Man Without a Country" as 
you would erase with a wet sponge some mark 
from a slate. Of course that is what would have 
happened had the author of that picturesque 
oath been shot. Dr. Hale entertains a strange 
idea of what it would be right and just for the 
United States Government to do with an indis- 
creet and hot-headed young soldier. Think of 
returning in these days to the cold-blooded bru- 
tality of Torquemada ! And then again, think of 
a normally constructed man cherishing anything 
like respect, to say nothing of love, for the kind 
of country Dr. Hale has pictured. There are in 
this world better things than even one's country 
— God, justice, and the love and service every 
man owes to our human race, these come first. 
The noblest patriotism does not fling its cap in 
air, and shout, "My country, right or wrong!" 

Philip Nolan was, notwithstanding his tempo- 
rary lapse from loyalty, a very good sort of 
man; in fact, he was an unusually desirable citi- 
zen. His extreme conscientiousness, which, since 
there was in truth no such man as Nolan, must 
have been Dr. Hale's conscientiousness, was just 
the peculiar moral quality we as a people stand 
most in need of. All the time that our unfortu- 
nate soldier was the victim of a cruelty which we 
are asked to believe was a reasonable punishment, 
fat politicians of all political complexions were 
swindling the public treasury and plundering it 



BOOKS 21 

without shame. It is fair to believe, if we are 
to listen to Dr. Hale, that had those politicians 
got the word "damn" and the name of their 
country into anything like close proximity, the 
one with the other, they would have been treated 
to the fearful punishment of a life-long cruise. 
But surely their more than damnable rascality 
and corruption were worse than a passionate oath 
soon repented of. Dr. Hale's book is everywhere 
praised for what men call its patriotic teaching, 
but to my mind its instructions are wrong and its 
story immoral. 

IV 

Charles Sumner collected a large and valu- 
able library, and one that covered many sub- 
jects quite foreign to the one absorbing in- 
terest of his life. To be sure, some of the 
most unpromising works contributed to the liter- 
ary embellishment of his public addresses, but 
still not a few of them were, according to his own 
statement, as far away from his personal feeling 
and experience as a book could possibly be. Among 
his books were some treating of religious doctrines 
as such, and, what seems strange enough to any 
one who will give the matter a thought, there 
were among these some that were much the worse 
for use. How could he enjoy the old English 
preachers of the time of Bishop Taylor and yet 
remain wholly destitute of religious feeling? So 
far as is known the following letter which Sum- 



22 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

ner wrote to his college friend, the Rev. Dr. 
Stearns, of Newark, N. J., is the only record we 
have of the distinguished statesman's religious 
views. As such it has a permanent interest: 

Cambridge, Jan. 12, 1833. 

My Dear Friend: — I have received and am 
grateful for your letter. The interest you manifest 
in my welfare calls for my warmest acknowledg- 
ments. I do not know how I can better show my- 
self worthy of your kindness than with all frank- 
ness and plainness to expose to you, in a few words, 
the state of my mind on the important subject upon 
which you addressed me. 

The last time I saw you, you urged upon me 
the study of the proofs of Christianity, with an 
earnestness that flowed, I was conscious, from a 
sincere confidence in them yourself, and the conse- 
quent wish that all should believe; as in belief was 
sure salvation. I have had your last words and 
look often in my mind since. They have been not 
inconstant prompters to thought and speculation 
upon the proposed subject. I attended Bishop 
Hopkins' lectures, and gave to them a severe atten- 
tion. I remained and still remain unconvinced that 
Christ was divinely commissioned to preach a reve- 
lation to men, and that He was entrusted with the 
power of working miracles. But when I make this 
declaration I do not mean to deny that such a being 
as Christ lived and went about doing good, or that 
the body of precepts which have come down to us 
as delivered by Him, were so delivered. I believe 
that Christ lived when and as the Gospel says ; that 
He was more than man, namely, above all men who 
had as yet lived — and yet less than God ; full of the 
strongest sense and knowledge, and of a virtue su- 



BOOKS 23 

perior to any which we call Roman or Grecian or 
Stoic, and which we best denote when, borrowing 
His name, we call ourselves Christians. I pray 
you not to believe that I am insensible to the good- 
ness and greatness of His character. My idea of 
human nature is exalted, when I think that such a 
being lived and went as a man amongst men. And 
here, perhaps, the conscientious unbeliever may find 
good cause for glorifying his God; not because He 
sent His Son into the world to partake of its trou- 
bles and be the herald of glad tidings, but because 
He suffered a man to be born in the world in whom 
the world should see but one of themselves, en- 
dowed with qualities calculated to elevate the stand- 
ard of attainable excellence. 

I do not know that I can say more without be- 
traying you into a controversy, in which I should be 
loath to engage, and from which I am convinced no 
good will result to either party. I do not think I 
have a basis for faith to build upon. I am without 
religious feeling. I seldom refer my happiness or 
acquisitions to the Great Father from whose mercy 
they are derived. Of the first great commandment, 
then, upon which so much hangs, I live in perpetual 
unconsciousness — I will not say disregard, for that, 
perhaps, would imply that it was present in my 
mind. I believe, though, that my love to my 
neighbor — namely, my anxiety that my fellow crea- 
tures should be happy, and my disposition to serve 
them in their honest endeavors — is pure and strong. 
Certainly I do feel an affection for everything that 
God created; and this feeling is my religion. 

"He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 



24 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

I ask you not to imagine that I am led into the 
above sentiment by the lines I have just quoted — 
the best of Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner" — but rather that I seize the lines to ex- 
press and illustrate my feeling. 

This communication is made in the fulness of 
friendship and confidence. To your charity and 
continued interest in my welfare, suffer me to com- 
mend myself as 

Your affectionate friend, 

Chas. Sumner. 

Very different is a letter which the distin- 
guished philosopher and scientist, Joseph Henry, 
wrote to his friend, Mr. Patterson, concerning his 
religious belief. It was the last letter he indited, 
and it was not mailed because he intended to read 
it over before he sent it to its destination. Mr. 
Patterson never received it. It was found in the 
drawer of Prof. Henry's desk after his death. Its 
interest for us centers in the fact that it, like the 
letter of Sumner's writing, gives us in frank and 
unconventional fashion the religious convictions 
of a man of great learning and distinction. It 
differs from Sumner's letter not so much in its 
spirit and temper as in the substance of the be- 
lief which it sets forth. 

The letter is too long for unabridged trans- 
cription, but a few salient excerpts may be given, 
and from these the reader will with little difficulty 
discover the drift of the entire letter : 



BOOKS 25 

"In the scientific explanation of physical phe- 
nomena we assume the existence of a principle hav- 
ing properties sufficient to produce the effects which 
we observe; and when the principle so assumed ex- 
plains by logical deductions from it all the phe- 
nomena, we call it a theory; thus we have the 
theory of light, the theory of electricity, etc. There 
is no proof, however, of the truth of these theories 
except the explanation of the phenomena which 
they are invented to account for. This proof, how- 
ever, is sufficient in any case in which every fact 
is fully explained. 

"In accordance with this scientific view, on what 
evidence does the existence of a Creator rest? First, 
it is one of the truths best established by experi- 
ence in my own mind that I have a thinking, will- 
ing principle within me, capable of intellectual ac- 
tivity and of moral feeling. Second, it is equally 
clear to me that you have a similar spiritual prin- 
ciple within yourself, since when I ask you an in- 
telligent question you give me an intelligent an- 
swer. Third, when I examine operations of na- 
ture I find everywhere through them evidences of 
intellectual arrangements, of contrivances to reach 
definite ends precisely as I find in the operations of 
man; and hence I infer that these two classes of 
operations are results of similar intelligence. 
Again, in my own mind I find ideas of right and 
wrong, of good and evil. These ideas, then, exist in 
the universe, and therefore form a basis of our 
ideas of a moral universe. Furthermore, the con- 
ceptions of good which are found among our ideas 
associated with evil, can be attributed only to a be- 
ing of infinite perfections like the being whom we 
denominate 'God.' On the other hand we are con- 
scious of having such evil thoughts and tendencies 
as prevent us from associating ourselves with a di- 



26 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

vine being who is the director and the governor of 
all, or even from calling upon him for mercy with- 
out the intercession of one who may, being holy, 
yet affiliate himself with us." 

Of all published statements of faith or of want 
of faith it seems to the writer that the Confession 
of Octavius Brooks Frothingham, made by him 
at the close of his ministry in New York, and 
not many years before his death, is the saddest, 
and in some ways the most astonishing. Mr. 
Frothingham was graduated at Harvard in 1843, 
and at the Cambridge Divinity School three years 
later. His first pastorate was with the North 
(Unitarian) Church in Salem, where he remained 
about eight years. His second charge was in Jer- 
sey City, and lasted four years. In 1860 he be- 
came the pastor of the Third Unitarian Congre- 
gational Church in the City of New York, and 
that church soon after his settlement with it be- 
came an "Independent" congregation, while Mr. 
Frothingham became widely known as the leader 
of the "Free Religious Movement." Mr. Froth- 
ingham's reputation as a brilliant writer, elo- 
quent speaker, and accomplished scholar was not 
only national, but world-wide. Among his books 
— all of them crowded with interest and literary 
charm — are "Transcendentalism in New Eng- 
land," "The Religion of Humanity," "The Life 
of Theodore Parker," "The Life of George Rip- 
ley," "The Life of Gerrit Smith," "Recollections 
and Impressions," "Boston Unitarianism," "The 



BOOKS 27 

Cradle of the Christ," "The Spirit of the New 
Faith," "The Safest Creed," "The Beliefs of the 
Unbelievers," "The Assailants of Christianity," 
"Visions of the Future," and a large number of 
sermons, with several books of Bible-stories for 
children. 

After a ministry in New York of about twenty 
years Mr. Frothingham's health failed, and a trip 
abroad was taken without any change in the di- 
rection of recovery. He resigned his charge, and 
for the few years that remained to him devoted 
himself to literature. His closing years were 
marked by an increasing melancholy which may 
have been due in part to ill-health. He was dis- 
appointed in the result of his life-work, which he 
accounted to have been in some measure a failure. 
Mr. Frothingham in his "Recollections and Im- 
pressions" ascribes the mental and spiritual dis- 
quietude of certain distinguished unbelievers to 
"temperament" and to the subjective results of 
"transitional periods," but these certainly do not 
entirely account for the extensive distribution of 
the "downcast mood" among unbelievers of widely 
differing temperaments and circumstances in 
countries and civilizations far removed from each 
other. Doubt and unbelief, though they may not 
equally depress all, have yet no power to make 
any either strong or happy. Elsewhere Froth- 
ingham treats of Thomas Paine, but there is 
abundant evidence that this man had something 
of the "downcast mood" discoverable in Joseph 



28 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Blanco White, "George Eliot," the author of 
"Physicus," Aaron Burr, Shelley, and Robes- 
pierre — widely differing temperaments, disposi- 
tions, and purposes. And yet it is true that some 
devoted Christians have shared this "downcast 
mood." Cowper was quite as miserable in mind 
as was White — he was much more miserable than 
Shelley, and it must be remembered that a great 
deal of Shelley's misery was merely poetry, and 
then he was in ill-health. 

So soon as it was known that Mr. Frothing- 
ham had given up his church and his work, the 
New York Evening Post secured from him a 
statement of his views which was of such an extra- 
ordinary character as to command the interest 
and attention of all thoughtful men. A sadder 
statement it is hard to find. From it we excerpt 
these lines : 

"One fact began to loom up before my mental 
vision in a disquieting way — that the drift of free- 
thought teaching was unquestionably toward a dead 
materialism, which I have abhorred as deeply as 
any evangelical clergyman I know. The men who 
would become leaders in the free-thought movement 
do not stop where I stop; they feel no tradition 
behind them; they have no special training for the 
work of 'restoring/ in which light I regard much 
of my work; I did not aim to create any new be- 
liefs or to tear down all existing ones, but to re- 
store, to bring to light and prominence the spir- 
itual essence of those faiths. . . . The men whom I 
saw coming upon the stage as the apostles of the 
new dispensation of free thought were destroyers 



BOOKS 29 

who tore down, with no thought of building up; 
there seemed to be no limit to their destructive 
mania, and no discrimination in their work. Their 
notion seemed to be to make a clean sweep of every 
existing creed; they apparently knew not and 
cared not whether anything in the shape of belief 
should arise from the ashes of the world's creeds. 

"The situation, therefore, when I stopped 
preaching and went to Europe, was about as fol- 
lows: Evangelical religion was stronger, the 
churches were better filled, there was more of the 
religious spirit abroad than when I began work 
twenty years ago. Such men as came forward as 
teachers in the free-thought movement were out- 
and-out materialists. Lastly, my own position was 
unpleasant and my health was failing. . . . 

"When I left New York for Europe I believed 
and said that I might take up my work as pastor 
of an independent church when I got back. But I 
may as well say now that I could not do it. I 
would not be able to teach as I did. Whether it is 
that advancing years have increased in me what- 
ever spirit of conservatism I may have inherited — 
my father was a clergyman — or whether it is that 
there is such a thing as devolution, as well as evo- 
lution, and that I have received more light, I do not 
know. But it is certain that I am unsettled in my 
own mind concerning matters about which I was 
not in doubt ten or even five years ago ; I do not 
know that I believe any more than I did years ago, 
but I doubt more. . . . But, looking back over the 
history of the last quarter of a century with the 
conviction that no headway whatever has been 
made; with the conviction that unbridled free 
thought leads only to a dreary negation called ma- 
terialism; there has been a growing suspicion in 
me that there might be something behind or below 



30 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

what we call revealed religion, which the scientific 
thinkers of our time are beginning vaguely to dis- 
tinguish as an influence that cannot be accounted 
for at present, but which nevertheless exists. . . . 
I said a moment ago, let scientific investigation go 
on by all means; not only it can do no harm, but 
I am sure that the farther it goes the more clearly 
will scientific men recognize a power not yet de- 
fined, but distinctly felt by some of the ablest of 
them. This question has presented itself to me 
many times in the last few years: What is the 
power behind ignorant men who find dignity and 
comfort in religion? Last summer, when in Rome, 
I was much interested in observing the behavior 
of the Romish clergy, not the men high in power 
and steeped in diplomacy and intrigue, but the 
working men of the church — the parish priests who 
went about among the people as spiritual helpers 
and almoners. I talked with many of -these men, 
and found them to be ignorant, unambitious, and 
superstitious; and yet there was a power behind 
them which must mystify philosophers. What is 
this power? I cannot undertake to say. But it is 
there, and it may be that those persons who deny 
the essential truths of revealed religion are all 
wrong. At any rate, I, for one, do not care to go 
on denying the existence of such a force. 

"To my old friends and followers, who may feel 
grieved at such an admission on my part, I would 
say that I am no more a believer in revealed re- 
ligion today than I was ten years ago. But, as I 
said before, I have doubts which I had not then. 
The creeds of today do not seem in my eyes to be so 
wholly groundless as they were then, and, while I 
believe that the next hundred years will see great 
changes in them, I do not think that they are des- 
tined to disappear. To sum up the whole matter, 



BOOKS 31 

the work which I have been doing appears to lead 
to nothing, and may have been grounded upon mis- 
taken premises. Therefore it is better to stop. 
But I do not want to give the impression that I re- 
cant anything. I simply stop denying, and wait 
for more light." 



There died in 1902, in the ninety-second year 
of his age, one of the most interesting of the few 
public men it has been my good fortune to know. 
Frederick Saunders was at one time city editor of 
the New York Evening Post, and, later, the suc- 
cessor of Dr. Cogswell in the librarianship of the 
Astor Library. The latter position he secured 
through Washington Irving, who was his father's 
friend, and it was held with honor to himself and 
advantage to the institution until 1893, when the 
increasing infirmities of age compelled him to 
retire. 

Mr. Saunders was born in London, and came 
to the United States early in life as the repre- 
sentative of his father's publishing house (Saun- 
ders and Otley), and as an advocate of interna- 
tional copyright law. He did not live to see the 
enactment of the law, but he did much to create a 
favorable public sentiment, and those who know 
the history of that long and, at times, bitter con- 
flict are agreed in pronouncing him the true ini- 
tiator of the International Copyright Law, the 
justice of which is now so generally recognized. 
Through his father, who was an influential pub- 



32 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

lisher in earlier days before literature had suffered 
the commercialization which is now its pitiable 
disgrace, he had the privilege of knowing and of 
counting among his friends such men and women 
as Robert Southey, Harriet Martineau, Dr. 
Chalmers, Thomas Carlyle, William Cullen Bry- 
ant, George Bancroft, Thomas Moore, Henry 
Hallam, Thomas Campbell, Maria Edge worth, 
and Samuel Rogers. 

Mr. Saunders was himself a man of letters. He 
wrote, so far as I have been able to discover, fif- 
teen books, the most popular among which were 
"Salad for the Solitary" and "Salad for the So- 
cial." His "Evenings with the Sacred Poets" 
passed through several editions, and was finally 
revised and enlarged. From its sale he derived a 
considerable profit. 

Mr. Saunders was a literary recluse. He de- 
lighted in books, and was never happy when far 
removed from his library. In no sense of the word 
was he a man of the world. He lacked the fine 
manners and charm of presence many of his 
friends less gifted than himself possessed. He 
knew his social and personal limitations, and it 
was his consciousness of these that made him the 
shy and awkward man he was. Yet in the com- 
pany of those whose tastes and inclinations were 
like his own, he was frank, self-possessed, and joy- 
ous. He was a man who thought no guile. His 
spirit was deeply religious. The unbelief of his 
day, which found some eloquent expression in the 



BOOKS 33 

books and conversations of many gifted sons and 
daughters of genius with whom he was well ac- 
quainted, made no impression upon his deeply 
religious nature. He was fond of devotional 
books, though I do not know that any of his own 
works would have answered to that description. 
For works of a controversial nature he had no lik- 
ing. His religion was personal and contemplative 
rather than ecclesiastical and dogmatic. His 
mind was of an antique cast, and he lived largely 
in the past, concerning himself with old books, his- 
torical associations, and archaeological investiga- 
tions. As a companion he was in every way de- 
lightful. He had a large fund of rare and valu- 
able information of a bookish kind, and in the so- 
ciety of literary friends he was never reticent or 
taciturn. 

His books were not marked by originality, and 
yet they were in no sense of the word compilations. 
Into them went the varied wisdom of one long 
familiar with the literary landscape, and whose 
wont it was to wander at will through wooded 
vales and flower-encircled fields of learning. From 
his literary excursions he often returned laden 
with the choicest flowers. His books are read now 
only by a select few who delight to stroll through 
quaint and unfrequented ways, and are satisfied 
with the old beauty in which their fathers de- 
lighted and which the world can never wholly 
outgrow. 

Some good writers have received little honor in 



34 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

their day and generation, and some authors of no 
merit whatever have, for one reason or another, 
found willing publishers and have received wide 
and even enduring praise. Circumstances over 
which no one may have any great control, and 
mere accidents, and the whims and caprices of or- 
dinary men not infrequently settle the entire 
question of literary recognition. The opinion of 
the President of the United States with regard to 
the value of a book may be, from a literary point 
of view, of no great importance; but neverthless 
it remains true that if an author can get that dis- 
tinguished gentleman to say his work is in some 
way remarkable, its fortune is made. The un- 
measured castigation of the religious press and of 
the pulpit will accomplish the same result, for the 
value of the advertisement is in neither praise 
nor censure, but in the successful calling of the 
attention to the wares to be marketed in such a 
way as to pique curiosity or awaken interest. 
Years ago the famous anti-religious writer, Fran- 
ces Wright, publicly thanked the clergymen of 
America, of all denominations, for their persist- 
ent denunciation of her and her teachings. She 
told them she owed much of her popularity to 
their "misrepresentations," and she politely re- 
quested them to continue their "gratuitous adver- 
tising" of her lectures. Robert G. Ingersoll at- 
tributed his success as a speaker to the religious 
press, though, in truth, I think his splendid ora- 
tory was responsible for the large audiences that 



BOOKS 35 

gathered to hear him attack a religion that has 
withstood and will continue to withstand greater 
assaults than he was ever capable of making. 
More than one book has been suppressed into a 
Twentieth Edition. Literature has in these ma- 
terialistic days become so commercialized that real 
worth not infrequently stands in the way of suc- 
cess. It is humiliating but true that publishers 
are not looking for good literature, but for "the 
best sellers." An American publisher said to the 
writer of this paper, "I am in business for 
money. I think my judgment of books quite as 
good as that of my neighbors, but I also think I 
know what will sell." To be born in advance of 
one's age is a commercial calamity. It means for 
an author who is dependent upon his pen poverty 
and neglect. The commonplaces of life are safe, 
and only men of exceptional ability do well in 
leaving the beaten track. Blazing a trail may be 
interesting, but the wheels of civilization roll 
complacently over macadamized roads or spin with 
lightning speed along tracks of steel. One has 
only to examine a book like Stedman's "Library 
of American Literature" to see how large is the 
company of those who aspire to fame in the world 
of letters, and yet, though writing well, die un- 
discovered. The writer of this paper is a mem- 
ber of the Author's Club, an organization that 
holds its meetings during the winter months in 
the Carnegie Building, New York City. There 
with good cheer and kindly fellowship gather the 



36 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

men who make our books and papers, and whose 
names are the common property of the world. 
The club is not large, but among its members are 
some whose reputations are assured and whose 
books will be remembered and republished when 
they themselves are dust. And yet how many of 
that kindly and brilliant company are destined to 
be forgotten! How many are today little known 
to the reading world. Every large library is a 
literary mausoleum where slumber in dust and 
neglect the dead books of deceased authors. 
Eight-tenths of all the popular novels published 
in these times will be forgotten in another five 
years. A man once asked the writer what became 
of all the dead birds. There are millions of feath- 
ered songsters in our tree-tops, and they are con- 
stantly dying, but who ever sees a dead bird by 
the roadside or on the lawn? The yellow-covered 
novels, and novels of every other color, are dying 
as fast as they are hatched by the publishing fra- 
ternity. What becomes of them all? A day or 
two ago I discovered their fate — an enormous 
wagon trundled by my door, loaded down with 
books of every description, on their way to the 
paper-mill. I have had personal acquaintance 
with many writers whose books were good and 
whose names are unknown. They lived and died, 
and the world remembers them no more. 

Yet he is happy whose life is surrounded with 
the charm of good literature. Even the unsuc- 
cessful author has his consolation in the rare fel- 



BOOKS 3? 

lowship of gifted souls. Why should the scholar 
fret himself with the dull folly of idle fashions, 
the vulgar ambition of place and power, and the 
rude scramble for wealth that brings not with it 
one day more of inward gladness? Rich in noble 
reward is the philosophic and gentle life of high 
and serene converse with the storied past and the 
unspoken wonder and beauty of the great world 
of human achievement. 



II 

AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 



"There are different kinds of dust. One can 
well believe the dust that was not long ago a lovely 
rose retains something of its early fragrance. To 
the bibliophile and literary epicure there is a cer- 
tain indescribable charm in the dust that old books 
gather to themselves on their silent shelves. Cob- 
webs embellish the necks of aged wine-bottles, and 
render more attractive the sparkling juices they 
imprison, and that once blushed in the purple clus- 
ters. So in the dust of the well-filled library there 
is a delight our prosaic house-wife cannot under- 
stand . " — A rchceo logia , ' ' 

"Can nothing that 
Is new affect your mouldy appetite?" 

—"The Witts." 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 

*np HE Rev e Isaac Gosset, D.D., F. R. S." 

-*■ — thus it is that Kirby announces Dr. 
Gossett in his "Wonderful Museum," where we 
have the learned gentleman's picture maliciously 
done by a scamp of a print-seller, who has im- 
mortalized the Doctor's cocked hat and stunted 
figure. Dr. Gosset was born in Berwick Street, 
London, in 1744, and had his early education at 
Dr. Walker's, at Mile-end, where he learned 
something of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, 
and gave promise of becoming a distinguished 
scholar. Dr. Walker was a dried-up specimen of 
humanity who loved books much more than he 
loved boys, though it is on record that he was 
kind, after the fashion of his time, to most of the 
youngsters who were intrusted to his care. He 
was more than kind to young Isaac because he 
discovered, with the natural instinct which he 
had for everything resembling book-lore, that the 
lad was fond of the classics and literature. That 
fondness for books was a strong tie binding to- 
gether the dessicated heart of old Dr. Walker and 
the eager, enquiring mind of the youth. 

The school-master of a century ago was gener- 
ally a man of one idea and not infrequently he 
had not that much intellectual capital, all his 
stock in trade being rigid discipline in the shape 
of a birch rod. Dr. Walker was not in every way 
41 



42 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

a typical old-time pedagogue. Uninteresting and 
wanting in good-fellowship as he must have 
seemed to the ordinary men and women of his 
day, and severe and exacting as he certainly was 
at times in his relations with the young men who 
were his pupils, he had still a very warm heart, 
and liked nothing better than to see what he re- 
garded as the graceful and noble development of 
a promising intellect. When given the care and 
training of such an intellect he was the embodi- 
ment of enthusiasm, and no personal sacrifice was 
too great for him to make in directing the ener- 
gies and moulding the opinions of a favorite 
pupil. It is said that upon one occasion, when a 
little boy, whose years were so tender that noth- 
ing of the kind could have been expected of him, 
translated a page of Livy with something more 
than mere correctness of rendering and gave evi- 
dence of real delight in the Latin author, Dr. 
Walker rose from his chair with tears in his eyes, 
and, embracing the lad in the presence of his 
class-fellows, kissed him upon both cheeks. Per- 
haps there was nothing markedly original about 
Dr. Walker, but neither was there anything rude 
or vulgar in his nature, and his work was not 
wholly commonplace. He deserved well of the 
age in which he flourished, and certainly he is en- 
titled to the kindly remembrance of the genera- 
tions that follow him and are better for his hav- 
ing lived. 

From Dr. Walker's care young Isaac Gosset 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 43 

went to Dr. Kennicote's school, where he remained 
for some time. Later he sat at the feet of Mr. 
Hinton, who had a national reputation for sound 
learning and a large experience in the training of 
youthful minds. He received his Master of Arts 
from Oxford, and it was the same venerable in- 
stitution that put the finishing touch to his dig- 
nity in the shape of a Doctor of Divinity's hood, 
which I take it was more ornamental than the 
cocked hat which he wears in the malicious picture 
to which reference has been made. 

Dr. Gosset preached at Conduit Chapel, where 
a cultivated congregation listened to his sermons, 
which were always well written and correctly de- 
livered but which, like most of the sermons of that 
day and no small number of this as well, were wo- 
fully wanting in earnestness and spiritual enthu- 
siasm. His preaching was a literary perform- 
ance and awakened only an intellectual response. 
Preaching, unless constantly revitalized by that 
inner communion with God which is of the very 
essence of all true religion, becomes either coldly 
intellectual or cheerless and perfunctory. The 
machinery of worship has a direct and continuous 
tendency to destroy those spiritual elements 
which give to public religious services their pe- 
culiar significance and value. There is some- 
thing benumbing and stupefying in the too fre- 
quent repetition of the same prayer, even though 
the prayer be one of exceptional beauty and pe- 
culiar fitness to voice the hopes and desires of 



44 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

the human soul. Liturgical services sooner or 
later degenerate into empty parade and lifeless 
form. Dr. Gosset's lack of pulpit power was 
due, however, not so much to the deadening in- 
fluence of ritualism as to the unspiritual tendency 
of a pure intellectualism that appealed to the head 
only and left the heart untouched. And yet there 
must have been something in his discourses that 
addressed itself, if not to piety, at least to the 
sentimental side of human nature, for there sat in 
one of the pews directly in front of the pulpit a 
young and beautiful lady of cultivated mind and 
aristocratic associations, who, as she listened to 
the preacher, fell deeply in love with him and 
aspired to become his wife. Miss Hill, for that 
was her name, was the daughter of a wealthy tim- 
ber merchant and had considerable money in her 
own right. It could not have been, it seems to me, 
solely the person of Dr. Gosset that won the 
young lady's heart, for he was ill-favored, being 
a grotesque and at the same time vain-glorious 
dwarf. I suppose there must be in all this world 
a considerable number of men and women of dim- 
inutive stature who are still of a modest and retir- 
ing turn of mind, but so far as my own personal 
experience extends, the most self-satisfied and 
boastful specimens of humanity are of Liliputian 
build. Gosset was not only a dwarf, but he was 
an absurd dwarf, and nothing but his mental 
power and literary ability saved him from becom- 
ing the laughing-stock of his fellow men. When 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 45 

in the pulpit, in order to see his congregation, he 
was compelled to stand upon two hassocks; and 
it is related that upon one occasion, being some- 
what warmed up in his discourse, he slipped from 
the hassocks and for several minutes was invisible, 
though the sermon went on without interruption. 

Dr. Gosset's wife brought him a fortune of 
£6,000, and it was no longer necessary that he 
should preach in order to live. He did the only 
thing proper for a man of his unspiritual nature 
to do under the circumstances — he left the pulpit 
and became a collector of books. It is only as a 
collector of rare and costly books that the world 
now remembers the man who once drew one of the 
most cultivated of London congregations. Dr. 
Gosset was a good husband and father, but his 
wife had abundant reason to be jealous of his 
library. He lived with his books. Entire days 
were spent in their society, and he was even 
known to address certain volumes in the most ten- 
der and affectionate terms, assuring them of his 
warmest appreciation and of his determination 
never to part from them. 

As early as 1781 Dr. Gosset was to be seen at 
the great book-sales. Everybody knew him at 
Patterson's, Leigh and Southeby's, and most of 
the other halls in London where books were sold. 
He gave large sums for choice editions of his fa- 
vorite authors. It is not necessary to name the 
works Dr. Gosset purchased. Were he living to- 
day it is more than likely he would make a very 



46 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

different selection. He was fond of theological 
books, which is not strange when one considers 
the temper of the age and the peculiar training 
he had received. Theology is now at a sad dis- 
count, and were the amiable Doctor now living in 
these times and in the city of Albany, he might 
have, I am quite sure, for a sum so small that I 
will not belittle the books by naming it, all the 
works on theology in "Ye Olde Booke Man's" 
shop. I should not like to tempt "Ye Olde Booke 
Man" with the shekels had I no cart at his door 
ready to receive the goods. And, in truth, I do 
not see how I could be induced to either risk the 
shekels or pay for the cart. Ponderous tomes on 
Election, Reprobation, Decrees, and kindred 
themes have lost their charm. Perhaps we are, 
all of us, worse for the change that has come 
over the public mind and eclipsed the glory of pul- 
pit literature. I will not dispute with my reader 
if he believes that the dawn upon our horizon of a 
mighty revival of Baxter, Taylor, Cudworth, and 
Edwards would improve our morals and deepen 
our spiritual life. It may be that that is precisely 
the kind of a revival we need, but certain I am that 
it is precisely the kind of a revival we shall none 
of us ever see. Even dear old Dr. Hodge, whose 
sweet and gracious memory will haunt for many 
a year the classic shades of Princeton, is struck 
with death, and the dust already lies heavy and 
undisturbed upon the faded covers of his "Syste- 
matic Theology." Shedd's "Dogmatic Theology" 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 47 

will soon go the lonely way of all dogmatic things. 
Muller's "Christian Doctrine of Sin" is passing 
hand in hand with Dorner's "System of Christian 
Doctrine" to the peaceful shades of sacred obliv- 
ion. Before our careless vision they slip into the 
dark, and will be soon forgotten. Am I glad of 
all this? Now, my inquisitive reader, why do you 
ask that question? I am neither glad nor sad. 
I only state things as they are ; and all the while 
I quietly cherish in the secret recesses of my in- 
nermost heart the comforting belief that as God 
lived before Baxter was born, so He will continue 
to live when Shedd and Dorner are no more. Did 
you remark that they do not think precisely that 
way at Princeton and venerable New Brunswick? 
Well, perhaps not ; yet there are those who cherish 
even now the pleasing fancy that approaching 
day-dawn makes less dun the sedges of Newark 
Bay and the marshes of picturesque Hoboken. It 
is a flying popular report (not yet a promulgation 
from the house-top) that not a few wise men may 
be found in the halls of sacred learning already 
named who firmly believe that God is greater than 
their fathers thought, and that His love is larger 
than their little systems of theology have made 
that love appear. Strange rumor ! — yet "import- 
ant if true." 

Dr. Gosset, queer old soul! loved theology, but 
he was also fond of the Latin and Greek classics, 
and translated Epictetus. Toward the end of his 
life he became so antique in mental structure that 



48 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

he was more at home in the Greece of two thousand 
years ago than in the merry England of his own 
time. He was a scholar, and yet he was not for 
that reason unsocial. He took delight in conver- 
sation, went to the theatre, rode in a fine chariot, 
and had a beautiful home. 

At last the end came. He died suddenly, De- 
cember 16th, 1812, leaving behind him two sons, 
one daughter, and more than four thousand 
books. His life as a literary collector had not 
impoverished him, for he made all his children 
rich. His sons had, each of them, £50,000, and 
his daughter had £20,000. To these sums must 
be added the financial results arising from the sale 
of his library. These were large for that day, 
notwithstanding the ecclesiastical and theological 
shadows that hung like damp veils of mist over 
the entire collection. It was thought by those 
who had given the matter consideration that the 
Doctor would leave all his sacred treasures to some 
university, and it was hinted that Oxford, having 
dignified him with a Doctor of Divinity's hood, 
expected to receive in return his valuable collec- 
tion of books. But Dr. Gosset was too wise a 
man to hide his costly library in the receiving 
tomb of a learned institution. In his will he gave 
his beloved books a fatherly blessing and bade 
them journey to every corner of England, mak- 
ing for themselves new homes and new friends 
by humble firesides as well as in stately museums. 

Not long ago there died a man of most beauti- 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 49 

ful spirit and of exquisite taste, who thought, in 
the matter of the disposal of a library after its 
collector's death, as old Gosset thought not far 
from a century ago. "Read, mark, learn, and in- 
wardly digest" (forgive, I pray you, good reader, 
the slightly theological cast of the sentence) this 
extract from the will of Edmond de Goncourt, 
which even in an English translation no bookman 
can contemplate without emotion: 

"My wish is that my Drawings, my Prints, my 
Curiosities, my Books — in a word, these things of 
art which have been the joy of my life — shall not 
be consigned to the cold tomb of a museum, and 
subjected to the stupid glance of the careless 
passer-by; but I require that they shall all be dis- 
persed under the hammer of the Auctioneer, so that 
the pleasure which the acquiring of each one of 
them has given me shall be given again, in each 
case, to some inheritor of my own tastes." 

There is another reason, and it is a good one, 
so it seems to me, why after the death of a collec- 
tor an auctioneer should make the acquaintance 
of his library. Colleges and museums are now the 
recipients of so many gifts that often they have 
upon their shelves three or four copies of the same 
book. Shelf room must be economized. The du- 
plicates are sold. I purchased not long ago a 
volume that had been in the library of Yale Uni- 
versity and that contained the university book- 
plate, beneath which was plainly stated the fact 
that the said book had come to the institution 
from the "Bequest of Jonathan Edwards, M.D., 



50 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

in 1887." The book is before me as I write, and 
furnishes one more argument against sending a 
valuable library to the classic halls of a modern 
college. 

After Dr. Gosset's death kind and appreciative 
notices of his life and character appeared. There 
was published also a poem of some length, and 
well worth reading. Few now remember that Gos- 
set once lived in the heart of England and there 
collected rare and costly books ; yet not long ago 
a gentleman told me it was his opinion that old 
Gosset, remembered, if remembered at all, by his 
cocked hat and deformed figure, was the father 
of our modern book collectors. 

Four years after the sale of Gosset's library, 
William Roscoe, a man of great learning and 
beautiful spirit, whose books ''The Pontificate of 
Leo X." and "The Life of Lorenzo de Medici" 
will long remain standard in English literature, 
met with reverses in business, and was compelled 
to dispose of his library. Gosset and Roscoe must 
have known each other, though, in truth, I doubt 
if there was much in common between them save 
the love of letters. When Roscoe had seen the 
last book pass from his fond possession, he sat 
down in his dismantled room, before his empty 
shelves, and penned this lovely sonnet: 

"As one who, destined from his friends to part, 
Regrets his loss, yet hopes again, erewhile, 
To share their converse and enjoy their smile, 
And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart, — 



AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 51 

Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder Art! 
Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguile 
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil, 
I now resign you — nor with fainting heart. 
For, pass a few short years, or days, or hours, 
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold, 
And all your sacred fellowship restore; 
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers, 
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, 
And kindred spirits meet to part no more." 

Roscoe rests in the burying ground connected 
with the Unitarian church in Renshaw Street, 
Liverpool. Nearby, in the same ground, is the 
grave of Joseph Blanco White. The church con- 
tains a beautiful bust of Roscoe, and upon the 
walls are elaborate memorials of various members 
of his family. I do not know where Gosset lies 
at rest, but doubtless some day the book-lovers of 
England and America will rear over his dust a 
memorial shaft of snowy marble to bear his hon- 
ored name and record their affectionate regard. 

Dear old Dr. Gosset, we love you none the less 
for the few faults that only make you seem more 
human. In a commercial age we treasure in our 
hearts your delight in noble and gracious books. 
Be pleased, we pray you, to gaze with kindly vis- 
ion from the empyrean where you dwell, and add 
your blessing to the gladness of our hearts as we 
gather round us those sweet and wondrous souls 
that were your joy and are our delight. 



Ill 

LITERARY FAME 



" 'T is a fine thing that one weak as myself 
Should sit in his lone room, knowing the words 
He utters in his solitude shall move 
Men like a swift wind — that tho' dead and gone, 
New eyes shall glisten when his beauteous dreams 
Of love come true in happier frames than his." 

— Robert Browning. 

"I shall dine late; but the dining-room will be 
well lighted, the guests few and select." 

— Landor. 



LITERARY FAME 

THE honors and pleasures of this world, and 
it may be of other worlds as well if such ex- 
ist, are for the men and women who have cour- 
age to take them. Strong, self-reliant souls 
spend no time in foolish regret, but reach out in 
every direction and appropriate to their own use 
whatever is fitted for their service. Audacity wins 
by divine right of conquest. Think meanly of 
yourself, and the world will take you at your own 
estimate. No man need go down into an entirely 
obscure grave if he have but the wit and courage 
to keep out of it. Much less is there any com- 
pulsion or limitation, divine or human, that places 
noble living beyond the reach of any earnest soul. 
Yet it is not in audacity alone that the victory 
over oblivion is won; there must be something in 
the man to justify the audacity. Or if there be 
in him nothing of the kind, there must be at least 
some rare circumstance to preserve the soul in 
amber. But, one way or another, the timid al- 
ways bid for inglorious obscurity. Gods and men 
delight in the hero. If they do not herald his ad- 
vent, they are never weary of celebrating his 
vices and virtues when once he has lived his life 
and made an end of it. His mouldering bones 
have in death this strange power, that they can 
change a mound of dust and sod into a sacred 
shrine. Only a man must think well of himself 

55 



56 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

unless he have extraordinary genius. Genius of 
high order concerns itself little about laws and 
regulations that help the wingless to rise. Men 
of moderate ability find in all kinds of conform- 
ity both safety and advancement. The great 
genius trusts his own strength. Homer and 
Shakspeare concern themselves about many 
things that scarcely enter our intellectual world, 
but all our rules and regulations are to them as 
the green withes Delilah bound about the strong 
limbs of the giant Samson. They can even afford 
to think lightly of themselves, for their strength 
is great, and their proportions are revealed to all 
by the vastness of their shadows. Very different 
is it with men of ordinary ability. They must be- 
lieve in themselves, and that belief must find ade- 
quate expression. Shakspeare, it would seem, 
had no care for his plays. He never revised them, 
nor did he make any effort to preserve them. They 
were saved from destruction by other hands than 
his. With a moderate competence he settled him- 
self in Stratford-upon-Avon, and thought no 
more of what he had written. There is a certain 
unconsciousness about every immortal work. In 
"Macbeth" we are told that 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more; it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 

The little men who thus think and feel find 



LITERARY FAME 57 

every line descriptive of the life they know and 
call their own. They give rein to the trivial ele- 
ments in themselves, "strut and fret" a brief 
season, and are then decently interred beneath 
their own insignificance. Few are like the mas- 
ters of thought and the leaders of great enter- 
prises who are too vast for oblivion. And still 
the colossal men err on the safe side. Dante 
makes himself the friend and companion of Vir- 
gil. He claims a place with great poets. He 
praises his old schoolmaster for this, that he 
"taught him how men eternize themselves." Was 
it vanity that led Napoleon to say in an un- 
guarded moment, "God created Napoleon and 
rested"? When they asked Cicero of his lineage, 
he responded, "I commenced an ancestry." "It 
becomes all men," wrote Sallust, "who desire to 
excel other animals, to strive to the utmost of 
their power not to pass through life in obscurity, 
like the beasts of the field, which Nature has made 
grovelling and subservient to appetite." Horace 
made no mistake when he closed the third book of 
his Odes with these deathless lines : 

"I have reared a monument 
More enduring than bronze, 
And loftier than the regal pyramids, 
Which neither wasting raindrops, 
Nor the wild north-wind shall destroy. 
I shall not wholly die — 

I shall live in the remembrance of posterity, 
So long as the pontiff shall ascend the Capitol 
With the silent and sacred virgin." 



58 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Virgil felt the same craving for remembrance 
when he wrote in his third Georgic, referring to 
the achievements of others, these striking words: 
"I, too, must attempt a way whereby to lift me 
from the ground and to spread, victorious, my 
fame through the mouths of men." The gifted 
Fielding, whose "Tom Jones" will for many a 
long year preserve the literary fame of its au- 
thor, had a spirit not unlike that of the Latin 
poet. These are his words: "Come, bright 
love of fame. Comfort me by the solemn as- 
surance that when the little parlor in which 
I now sit shall be changed for a worse furnished 
box, I shall be read with honor by those who 
never knew or saw me." Even good David 
Brainerd was not free from this desire for re- 
membrance which, in his Journal, he accounts 
to be a sin. Thus he puts himself on record: 
"The sins I had most sense of were pride and 
a wandering mind, and the former of these evil 
thoughts excited me to think of writing and 
preaching and converting the heathen or per- 
forming some other great work that my name 
might live when I should be dead." 

Great men believe in themselves ; and in how 
many instances with prophetic vision they fore- 
cast their destiny. Genius at its best is always 
prophetic. Learning acquaints us with the past, 
observation gives us knowledge of the present, 
but genius alone enables its possessor to antici- 
pate the future. This power of prevision has 



LITERARY FAME 59 

sustained many a great man in the hour of neg- 
lect. When Charlotte Corday had donned the 
red chemise des condemnes she said, " This is the 
toilet of death, arranged by somewhat rude hands, 
but it leads to immortality." Danton was asked 
at his trial, "What is your name? Where is the 
place of your abode?" He answered, "My name 
is Danton, a name tolerably well known in the 
Revolution; my abode will soon be annihilation, 
but I shall live in the pantheon of history." 
Junius was sure that his book would be read long 
after he had himself descended into the grave. 
Such assurance creates within the bosom that 
cherishes it an audacity the common mind cannot 
understand. It gives to the hour of defeat all 
the support and enthusiasm of victory; it takes 
from neglect its sting, and renders the soul indif- 
ferent to the poor opinion of a thoughtless mul- 
titude. It was assurance born of this prevision 
that enabled Thucydides to say of one of his own 
books, "It is so composed as to be regarded as a 
permanent possession, rather than as a prize 
declamation intended only for the present." Just 
pride, noble ambition, superiority to fate, undis- 
turbed composure in times of trouble, regard for 
posterity — these are not unworthy of a superior 
man. It is impossible to think that such a man 
could be devoid of all these. " I hear the voices 
of generations yet to be, and I hasten to render 
myself worthy of their applause," exclaimed a re- 
jected philosopher in the hour of his soul's mar- 



60 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tyrdom. Noble were the voices that called to him ; 
even nobler was his response. The appeal to pos- 
terity relieves the man who can make it from all 
concern about the " snap-shot " opinions of the 
rude and vulgar, detaches the vision from a poorer 
self within one's own bosom that would, from mo- 
tives of immediate self-interest, make terms with 
the canaille ; it gives an exalted ideal. 

Yet a man should make sure that he is of the 
elect. There were great men before Agamemnon, 
but who knows anything about them? There was 
something wanting either in the work or in the 
workman. It is not wholly a fault of the age that 
we know so little of men who were once so distin- 
guished. "Time," writes a gifted author, "hath 
spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, and con- 
founded that of himself." The impartial years 
treat with calm indifference all our artificial dis- 
tinctions. The houses of fame that men build 
with large expense of space and toil are, many of 
them, of such light pasteboard that not the faint- 
est evening breeze shall be able to go by and leave 
them standing. They only are elect wh » elect 
themselves. The work must have in it some 
worthy or, at least, some unusual element. Cis- 
tacious made so gracious an obeisance to Eternal 
Forgetfulness that even the silent genius of Ob- 
livion spared his name, and would have spared 
more had there been more to spare. Not one 
mason of all those who labored in the building of the 
Temple of Diana has left to us even his name, but 



LITERARY FAME 61 

it is known to every schoolboy that Herostratus 
burned that sacred structure. Time, that effaced 
with ruthless hands so many worthy names, has 
embalmed in history the less worthy name of "the 
aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome." 

It is common to describe fame as a poor and 
paltry thing, the while it is the dearest ambition 
of the very men who thus describe it. Dr. Bartol 
said, "Self-forgetfulness is God's remembrance," 
and it is true that the man who feeds upon him- 
self feeds upon littleness, yet the wish to escape 
the fate of a mere worm is surely not a thing to 
provoke derision. Is one less a man because he 
would aspire to a man's future ? Man is not only 
the intelligent observer of the universe, but he is 
in a certain subordinate sense its creator. For 
him 

"The blossoming stars upshoot — 
The flower-cups drink the rain." 

All things look to him for recognition. The 
story in Genesis made him master of "every living 
thing." Unlike other animals, he faces the stars. 
" I, who have conversed with noble men and women 
who were as stars in the firmament of our common 
humanity, cannot contemplate oblivion; nor 
would I lose the rich treasures of a well-filled mind 
in the dark waters of Lethe. I would remember 
and be remembered." Thus a great thinker ex- 
pressed himself in the hour of death. Man's do- 
minion over the universe begets within him the 
wish that conquers time. 



62 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Immortality hangs upon a thread. A single 
poem may guard for long centuries the name of 
its fortunate author. 

"A single word may make a life immortal 
Immortally said, 
When all the deeds this side th' eternal portal 
Basely done are dead." 

Here is a list, interesting though imperfect, as all 
such lists must be, of names saved from oblivion 
by the happy accident of a single inspiration : 

Sarah Flower Adams, "Nearer, my God, to 

Thee." 
S. J. Adams, "We are coming, Father Abra- 
ham, Three Hundred Thousand More." 
James Aldrich, "A Death-Bed." 
Cecil Frances Alexander, "The Burial of 

Moses." 
Elizabeth Akers Allen, "Rock Me to Sleep." 
Ernst Maritz Arndt, "What is the German 

Fatherland ?" 
Anna Lsetitia Barbauld, "Life." 
Lady Anne Barnard, "Auld Robin Gray." 
James Beattie, "The Minstrel." 
Ethel Lynn Beers, "The Picket Guard." 
Robert Bloomfield, "The Farmer's Boy." 
Francis William Bourdillon, "Light." 
William Goldsmith Brown, "A Hundred Years 

to Come." 
Mrs. Brewer, "Little Drops of Water." 
H. H. Brownell, "The River Fight." 
Michael Bruce, "Elegy Written in Spring." 
Wiliam Allen Buter, "Nothing to Wear." 
Henry Carey, "Sally in our Alley." 
Phoebe Cary, "Nearer Home." 



LITERARY FAME , 63 

Eliza Cook, "The Old Arm-Chair." 

Philip P. Cooke, "Florence Vane." 

Julia Crawford, "We Parted in Silence." 

Richard Henry Dana, "Buccaneer." 

William Douglas, "Annie Laurie." 

Joseph Rodman Drake, "The Culprit Fay/' and, 
perhaps, "The American Flag." 

Timothy Dwight, "Columbia, the Gem of the 
Ocean." 

Daniel Emmet, "Dixie's Land." 

Thomas Dunn English, "Ben Bolt." 

David Everett, "You'd Scarce Expect One of 
my Age." 

William Falconer, "The Shipwreck." 

Francis M. Finch, "The Blue and the Gray." 

Patrick S. Gilmore, "When Johnny Comes 
Marching Home." 

Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country 
Churchyard." 

Albert G. Greene, "Old Grimes." 

Fitz Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozzaris," and, 
perhaps, "On the Death of Joseph Rodman 
Drake." 

Francis Bret Harte, "The Heathen Chinee." 

William Hamilton, * The Braes of Yarrow." 

Reginald Heber, From Greenland's Icy Moun- 
tains." 

Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
lic." 

Mary Woolsey Howland, "In the Hospital." 

Joseph Hopkinson, "Hail Columbia! Happy 
Land!" 

Thomas Ken, "L. M. Doxology" — "Praise God 
from Whom all blessings flow." 

Lady Caroline Keppel, "Robin Adair." 

Francis Scott Key, "The Star-spangled Banner." 

Karl Theodor Kbrner, "The Sword Song." 



64 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Rouget de Lisle, La Marseillaise." 
William H. Lytle, " Antony and Cleopatra." 
Francis Sylvester Mahony (" Father Prout"), 

"The Bells of Shandon." 
Clement C. Moore, "A Visit from St. Nicholas." 
George P. Morris, " Woodman Spare That Tree." 
William Augustus Muhlenberg, "I would not 

Live always." 
Theodore O'Hara, "The Bivouac of the Dead." 
Kate Putnam Osgood, "Driving Home the 

Cows." 
John Howard Payne, "Home, Sweet Home." 
Edward C. Pinkney, "I Fill a Cup to One Made 

Up." 
James R. Randall, "Maryland." 
John Roulstone, "Mary had a Little Lamb." 
Max Schneckenburger, "The Watch on the 

Rhine." 
F. H. Smith, "Tenting To-night on the Old 

Camp Ground." 
Samuel Francis Smith, "America." 
Charles Sprague, "Ode on Shakspeare." 
John Still, "Good Ale." 

W. W. Story, "Cleopatra." Story will be re- 
membered as a sculptor. 
Rosa Hartwick Thorpe, "Curfew Must not Ring 

To-night." 
Augustus Montague Toplady, "Rock of Ages." 
Joseph Blanco White, "Night." 
Richard Henry Wilde, "My Life is Like a Sum- 
mer Rose." 
Forceyth Willson, "Old Sargeant." 
Emma Willard, "Rock'd in the Cradle of the 

Deep." 
Henry C. Work, "Marching through Georgia." 
Charles Wolfe, "Burial of Sir John Moore." 



LITERARY FAME 65 

Samuel Woodworth, 'The Old Oaken Bucket." 
Andrew Young, There is a Happy Land, Far, 
Far Away." 

A number of the poems included in the above 
list are poems only by courtesy, and in some cases 
it is a courtesy stretched almost to the breaking 
point. Of course such productions as "Little 
Drops of Water" and "Mary had a Little Lamb" 
are, without question, catalogued under the head 
of doggerel ; and, in truth, it is in no wise likely 
wise catalogueable. Yet even the foolish rhymes 
named may easily preserve the names of their mak- 
ers when erudite professors and distinguished judges 
have been forgotten. They require no mental ex- 
ertion, and their appeal to our instinctive love of 
rhythm is resistless. The tintinnabulous sounds 
of tinkling lines that lull to drowsy slumber or 
set the feet in motion, as the periodical recurrence 
of impulses and accents seizes upon sensitive 
nerves, fascinate and captivate the entire man. 
Truthfully the poet represents in these lines the 
marvelous power of his divine art : 

"Lo, with the ancient 
Roots of man's nature, 
Twines the eternal 
Passion of song. 

Ever Love fans it, • 
Ever Life feeds it, 
Time cannot age it, 
Death cannot slay. 



66 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Deep in the world-heart 
Stand its foundations, 
Tangled with all things 
Twin-made with all. 

Nay, what is Nature's 
Self, but an endless 
Strife toward music, 
Euphony, rhyme? 

Trees in their blooming, 
Tides in their flowing, 
Stars in their circling, 
Tremble with song. 

God on his throne is 
Eldest of poets: 
Unto his measures 
Moveth the Whole." 

The two great war-songs on the Southern side 
in our civil conflict of half a century ago were 
"Maryland" and "Dixie." The first of these was 
published in the Charleston Mercury, and at 
once became the delight of the Confederate heart. 
The second, strange to say, was written by a 
Northern man who was himself greatly surprised 
when he found himself the author of the song most 
popular with Southern soldiers. But Daniel De- 
catur Emmet did not write it for the use to 
which it was put. He was a minstrel of the kind 
our fathers liked, singing and cracking his jokes 
and delighting young and old with his peculiar 
mingling of wit and pathos. Blackened with 
burnt cork, he impersonated the negro, and gave 



LITERARY FAME 67 

his audiences striking and new pictures of South- 
ern life. Thus he traveled over England, return- 
ing with a fortune that slipped through his fin- 
gers, leaving him poor as he was when first he 
blackened his face and strung his violin. 

He was the inventor of "the walk-around," and 
soon his name was in a million mouths. The lost 
fortune was his again. He composed negro songs 
with wonderful mastery of that peculiar vein of 
feeling and melody. Most of his songs are no 
longer remembered, but "Dixie" lived, and will 
always live because of its old war-time associa- 
tions. It was as part of a "walk-around" that 
"Dixie" was constructed. Of a Sunday night, un- 
der the pressure of necessity, the great Southern 
war-song was written with no thought of its fu- 
ture. The following Monday it was sung, and a 
new fortune fell into the lap of Emmet. It was 
sung by everybody, and when, only twelve 
months later, the war commenced, the Southern 
soldiers caught up the strain and sang it in the 
camp and on the march. Upon more than one 
occasion they went into battle singing it. It be- 
came the great song of the Confederacy, made 
sacred by the thousands of brave men who per- 
ished with its notes upon their lips. 

Many a man once envied for his wealth and 
world-wide renown, having played his part upon 
the stage of life, is no longer remembered; but 
how well preserved, like the fly in amber, are 
many names of once lowly minstrels because long 



68 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

years ago a few simple lines touched the popular 
heart. 

A friend, gazing thoughtfully at some of the 
prominent books in my library, remarked: "A 
writer could, a hundred years ago, win immortal- 
ity with much smaller expenditure of intellectual 
power and ability than is required now to make 
even the faintest and most ephemeral impression 
upon the reading world. Were John Ray and 
Andrew Bernard living today, they could not find 
a paper or magazine of any standing that would 
care to publish their rhymes. Hundreds of fugi- 
tive verses in village papers are far more worthy 
of preservation than anything poet-laureate 
Thomas Shadwell ever dreamed of writing." The 
critics's eye continued wandering over the shelves 
until it suddenly lighted upon "The Poems of 
William Whitehead," and then came an explosion 
that was contagious, though not so complimentary 
to my literary discrimination as I could have 
wished. Whitehead was a quiet and inoffensive 
man, with a faculty for rhyming, but without the 
faintest spark of fire divine; still he was poet- 
laureate between Colley Cibber and the Rev. Dr. 
Thomas Warton, who was himself nothing of a 
poet though a very good-natured and scholarly 
man. The fact is, when we speak of an English 
laureate we are thinking of Tennyson, and yet he 
was but one of the fifteen laureled singers of old 
England, and he was followed by Austin, even 
as was Chaucer by John Ray, and Dryden by 
Thomas Shadwell. 



LITERARY FAME 69 

Not the least valuable of the familiar volumes 
that welcome me when it is my fortune to open 
them, are some old hymn books with verses that 
seem strange enough in these days of fine phrases 
and delicate rhetoric. Antiquarians will always 
value Sternhold and Hopkins for quaint expres- 
sion of "old-fashioned piety." Metrical versions 
of the Psalms are rarely successful, but this ver- 
sion was more than felicitous, and its good fortune 
has not yet passed away. In the edition of 1602 
are found the remarkable lines to which refer- 
ence is often made, and in which the Lord is urged 
to "give his foes a rap." They are in the twelfth 
stanza of the seventy-fourth Psalm, and read as 
follows : 

"Why doest withdraw thy hand abacke and hide it 
in thy lappe? 
O, plucke it out and be not slacke to give thy foes 
a rappe." 

Equally quaint is the thirty-sixth stanza of 
the seventy-eighth Psalm, in which God's cove- 
nant of mercy is described as a trade: 

"For why, their hearts were nothing bent to him nor 
to his trade, 
Nor yet to keepe or to performe the covenant that 
was made/' 

These lines are also very curious: 

"For why? a cup of mighty wine is in the hand of 
God; 
And all the mighty wine therein Himself doth 
poure abroad. 



70 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

As for the lees an' filthy dregs that do remain of 

it, 
The wicked of the earth shall drink and suck them 

every whit." 

Of all good books, ancient and modern, the 
words of Carlyle are forever true: 

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; 
the articulate, audible voice of the Past, when the 
body and material substance of it has altogether 
vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, 
harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, 
many-engined — they are precious, great; but what 
do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamem- 
nons, Pericteses and their Greece; all is gone now 
to some ruined fragments, dumb, mournful wrecks 
and blocks; but the Books of Greece! There 
Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives; 
can be called up again into life. No magic Rune 
is stronger than a Book. All that mankind has 
done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying in magic 
preservation in the pages of Books. They are the 
chosen possession of men." 

Prince and peasant are equally mortal. The 
vast army that marches oblivionward without 
halting day or night is not composed of the poor 
and illiterate alone. In its ranks are lords and 
ladies and proud bishops of half a dozen religious 
denominations. Not one person in a hundred 
thousand will be heard of fifty years hence. Not 
more than one in five hundred thousand will ever 
be called to mind at the end of another century. 
Darkness and oblivion with open arms wait to en- 
fold our race. And yet, such is the irony of fate, 



LITERARY FAME 71 

in the midst of all this forgetfulness here and 
there some man by mere accident impresses a 
wholly inconsequent name upon the enduring his- 
tory of our world, or enshrines it in the imperish- 
able literature of mankind. The page that pre- 
serves for us the name of John the beloved re- 
cords as well that of Judas, the betrayer of our 
Lord. Czolgosz will live in infamy as long, it 
may be, as Washington will continue in the love 
and veneration of our race. Learned and distin- 
guished professors in Oxford and Harvard may 
write many books, but everlasting Forgetfulness 
awaits both them and the literary results of all 
their toil. The shelves of the Bodleian Library 
are heavy with discarded intellectual timber. Yet 
a student, dissatisfied with Dr. Fell, wrote four 
lines of no real value about the dull but erudite 
professor, and lo ! that learned gentleman put on 
immortality. "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell" — 
had the clever translator rendered differently his 
"Martial," the world would never have known so 
well the name of the now famous Oxford instruc- 
tor. Gifford, who reviewed Keats' "Endymion" 
with that flavor of wormwood which attached it- 
self to nearly everything he wrote, whether in the 
Quarterly or in some other equally self-righteous 
mentor, once refused to reply to an attack made 
upon him by an obscure poet. "I will not kick 
the scamp into immortality!" said he. Another 
literary assassin connected with the Quarterly 
said of an antagonist, "I will not honor the fellow 



72 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

by spitting upon him. Should I do so he would 
boast of it until his last hour upon earth. I can- 
not touch him without immortalizing him." It is 
known that the Patriarch of Alexandria, who is 
the Abyssinian Pope, blesses his people by spit- 
ting upon them, and his loyal subjects believe 
there is some peculiar virtue in episcopal saliva; 
but it is only very recently that the writer of this 
paper discovered how daft on the subject of ex- 
pectoration are English men of letters. Edward 
Fitzgerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam's 
beautiful poem, was once so unlucky as to write 
these inconsiderate words about Mrs. Brown- 
ing : "Mrs. Browning's death is rather a relief to 
me, I must say. No more 'Aurora Leighs', thank 
God ! A woman of real genius, I know ; but what 
is the upshot of it all? She and her sex had bet- 
ter mind the kitchen and their children, and per- 
haps the poor." Mr. Browning was very angry, 
and the only thing he could think of under the in- 
fluence of a temporary fury was "spitting." 
This is what he wrote and published in the 
Athenaeum, as a rejoinder to Fitzgerald: 

TO EDWARD FITZGERALD 

"I chanced upon a new book yesterday, 
I opened it, and where my finger lay 

'Twixt page and uncut page these words I read — 
Some six or seven at most — and learned thereby 
That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye 
She never knew, thanked God my wife was dead. 
Ay, dead, and were yourself alive, good Fitz., 



LITERARY FAME 73 

How to return you thanks would task my wits. 
Kicking you seems the common lot of curs, 
While more appropriate greeting lends you grace; 
Surely to spit there glorifies your face — 
Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers." 

Browning's lips, it appears, were sanctified; 
had his pen also been somewhat sanctified it is not 
unlikely we should have been spared the above 
twelve lines. Perhaps it is too much to expect 
entire sanctification in a modern Englishman of 
letters, yet it is something to know that Browning 
was in a measure sorry for his miserable screed. 
It also helps us in our appreciation of Stevenson 
to believe that he regretted his Damien letter. An 
irascible pen should always be followed by a peni- 
tent heart. It is not difficult to understand Fitz- 
gerald's sense of relief when he knew that the 
author of "Aurora Leigh" was safely stowed 
away under the sacred shadows of the little Prot- 
estant cemetery at Florence. "Aurora Leigh" is 
a nine-book novel in verse, complex and full of 
learned allusions. Mr. Whipple describes its 
style as "elaborately infelicitous." Doubtless it 
is a work of genius and contains some quotable 
passages, but most of the poem is hard to under- 
stand and its images and allusions are far re- 
moved from our common human sympathy. 

There have been authors of no mean ability 
who from conscientious motives have suppressed 
their names, refusing to have them printed on the 
title-pages of their books. Of course they were 



74 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

men of deep religious spirit who feared that am- 
bition might supplant within their hearts a su- 
preme desire for the glory of God, and so alienate 
from them and their work the Divine Blessing. 
Their books treated of religious themes, and were 
written solely for the spiritual advantage of their 
fellow-men. The author of the famous "Imitation 
of Christ" furnishes an instance of such inward 
humility and deliberate self -surrender. The book 
is usually attributed to Thomas a Kempis, whose 
real name was Hammerlein. A copy of the book 
was found among his papers after his death, and 
as it was in manuscript his associates came at once 
to the conclusion that he was its author. The 
best informed scholars and antiquarians attribute 
it to John Charlier Gerson, who was Chancellor 
of the University of Paris and Canon of Notre 
Dame. In well-nigh every language of the civil- 
ized 1 world that treatise has been published, and it 
is one of the few immortal books in the devotional 
literature of our Christian faith. Yet no one 
whose claim carries with it any weight ever sought 
to be accounted the author of that remarkable 
work. "The Whole Duty of Man" is another 
book that has gone over the entire globe, influ- 
encing for good thousands of readers. The man 
who wrote it wrote it out of a deep spiritual ex- 
perience, and his pen was dipped in his own 
heart's blood. He would not push himself into 
the light lest the pride of this world, which he so 
feared, should come between the blessing of God 



LITERARY FAME 75 

and his work. Heaven's benediction was courted, 
but the applause of the world was held to be of 
little account. Charles H. Mackintosh, an Eng- 
lish schoolmaster, would have only the initials 
C. H. M. printed upon many devout and uplift- 
ing books that came from his consecrated pen. 
These men were all of them superior to personal 
ambition, and in their self -surrender we see the 
power of strong and earnest faith. 

There have been, on the other hand, some mak- 
ers of religious literature who viewed the matter 
differently, — writers who found peculiar pleasure 
in closely associating their names with what 
seemed to them to be for the glory of God and the 
good of their fellowmen. Their delight in such 
associating of themselves with God arose from no 
love of fame, but from the thought that they were 
connecting themselves with an enterprise that 
seemed to them to be more worthy of the noblest 
thought and effort than any other in all the 
world. Most of the immortal hymns that have en- 
riched the sacred services of the church have 
rendered illustrious the names of their authors. It 
is not difficult to believe that Toplady, who wrote 
"Rock of Ages," was quite as devout as was the 
author of the "Imitation of Christ." The wish to 
live on through the centuries in beautiful associa- 
tion with some high and holy enterprise or some 
piece of devout and noble literature is certainly 
no mean or unworthy desire. 

It must be remembered that there is a pride of 



76 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

humility even more offensive than the common sat- 
isfaction ordinary men feel in receiving praise 
from others. There is nothing lovely in self- 
abasement practiced for its own sake. The self- 
reliant man is the successful man, and self-reliance 
implies some degree of self-assertion. We view 
with pleasure one who conquers with resolute 
heart adverse circumstances; we are not greatly 
disturbed when we find him somewhat inclined to 
congratulate himself upon well-earned success. 
But mock-humility is a thing to despise, for it is 
the meanest kind of hypocrisy. Both Coleridge 
and Southey are sure that the devil's "darling sin 
is the pride that apes humility." The entire 
world feels by common instinct that Uriah Heep 
is a detestable sneak. 

There have been authors who from other than 
religious motives have striven to conceal their 
identity. Byron issued his "Don Juan" anony- 
mously. Southey sent his book "The Doctor" 
into the world with no acknowledgment of auth- 
orship. Walter Scott sent out his novels as the 
work of "The Author of Waverley" and at the 
same time, in order to distract the attention of the 
public, he published his poems and biography 
under his own name. Edmund Burke at twenty- 
seven printed anonymously his "Vindication of 
Natural Society," which was for a time ascribed 
to Bolingbroke. Pope did not put his name to 
the "Dunciad," and to escape detection he pub- 
lished the book in Dublin. James Hogg was "The 



LITERARY FAME 77 

Etrick Shepherd." Thomas Moore called himself 
"Thomas Little" and sometimes "Mr. Little." 
Professor Wilson came before the world as 
"Christopher North." Dr. Wolcott was "Peter 
Pindar." Francis Mahoney disguised himself as 
"Father Prout." In later days Mrs. Lewes was 
"George Eliot." Dickens was known as "Boz." 
Mme. Dudevant took the name of "George Sand." 
Louise De la Ramee was famous in every land as 
"Ouida." In America Franklin, Irving, Dr. Hol- 
land, Clemens, Rossiter Johnson, and many other 
gifted writers had pen names. No one is abso- 
lutely sure that Sir Philip Francis wrote "The 
Letters of Junius." Chatterton had his reason 
for hiding behind the "Rowley Poems." Bertram 
and Ireland disguised themselves as "Richardus 
Corinensis" and "William Shakspeare." Neither 
love of fame nor fear of its consequences had any- 
thing to do with their concealment of themselves. 
There are to this day those who believe in a Celtic 
Homer. James Macpherson knew right well that 
a stupid world could see neither power nor beauty 
in "Fingal" and "Temora" were it known that he 
was himself the better part of the great Ossian. 
How the gifted and ingenious Scotchman must 
have chuckled when he read his friend's learned 
essay intended to prove the authenticity of those 
glorious forgeries. Dr. Hugh Blair, professor 
of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, went 
so far as to declare his belief that the poems of 
Ossian must have been composed in the hunting 



78 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

stage of man's existence. "The allusions to herds 
of cattle are not many," said he in his famous re- 
view, "and of agriculture there is not a trace." 
How Macpherson managed to keep his face 
straight is more than one who has knowledge of 
the matter can understand. Think of Boswell 
kissing the "sacred relics of Shakspeare" — relics 
that had been manufactured out of whole cloth by 
one of his own acquaintances. Think of the liter- 
ary rascality of the inventor of the false "Decre- 
tals of Isidore" that for eight hundred years or 
more deceived the entire Christian world. George 
Psalmanazar was the assumed name of a literary 
imposter who passed himself off for a native of 
the island of Formosa. After many adventures 
he came to London and there translated the cate- 
chism of the State Church into his invented For- 
mosan language. He also published a fictitious 
"Description of Formosa." So great was his suc- 
cess that he made enough money in two years to 
enable him to spend more than five years in idle- 
ness and extravagance in London. Later in life 
he repented of his evil ways, and for fifty years 
conducted himself in so exemplary a manner and 
with such piety as to win the confidence of all 
who knew him. What shall be said of Vella, Mait- 
land, Peraira, Simonides, and Baricourt? Not all 
who have concealed their identity have had at 
heart a worthy motive. 

The real man is, after all, not the man with 
whom we have personal acquaintance. Not till 



LITERARY FAME 79 

Time has sifted out the chaff can we garner the 
pure grain. Only when the visible man has be- 
come a phantom are we able to discern the sub- 
stantial and enduring man whose home is history, 
and whose work is the common possession of an 
entire race. 

The story of insufficient compensation for good 
literary work is as old as literature itself. Ju- 
venal, in his Fifth Satire, has left the world bitter 
lines that require no comment: 

"Quick, call for wood, and let the flames devour 
The hapless produce of the studious hour; 
Or lock it up, to moths and worms a prey, 
And break your pens, and fling your ink away: — 
Or pour it rather o'er your epick flights, 
Your battles, sieges (fruit of sleepless nights), 
Pour it, mistaken men, who rack your brains, 
In dungeons, cocklofts, for heroick strains; 
Who toil and sweat to purchase mere renown, 
A meagre statue, and an ivy crown!" 

And in Macrobius is a witty story that comes 
to the same end, and impresses the same truth: 

"A Greek poet had presented Augustus with 
many little compliments, in the hope of some tri- 
fling remuneration. The Emperour, who found them 
of only moderate value, took no notice of the poor 
man; but, as he persisted in offering him his adu- 
latory verses, composed himself an epigram in 
praise of the poet; and when he next waited on 
him with his customary panegyrick, presented his 
own to him with amazing gravity. The man took 
and read it with apparent satisfaction; then putting 



80 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

his hand into his pocket, he deliberately drew out 
two farthings and gave them to the Emperour, 
saying, 'This is not equal to the demands of your 
situation, Sire, but 'tis all I have: if I had more, 
I would give it to you.' Augustus, who was not an 
ill-natured man, could not resist this; he burst into 
a fit of laughter, and made the poet a handsome 
present." 

Fame or money the author justly accounts the 
reward of worthy labor — what shall be said when 
both are deserved, and neither is accorded? 
Genius neglected in life and forgotten in death 
is one of the saddest of all things the literary 
mind is ever called to contemplate. The story of 
Chatterton, a suicide at seventeen and buried in 
a pauper's grave, is one of the most familiar of 
illustrations. Byron visited the last resting place 
of Churchill, and thus describes it : 

"I stood beside the grave of one who blazed, 
The comet of a season, and I saw 
The humblest of all sepulchres." 

How strange a thing is fame. It has no visible 
presence, yet thousands woo it with all the passion 
of a lover, and are willing to die if only they may 
hear their names sounded from its lips of song 
and story. Verily men chase a phantom. Yet his- 
tory were something quite unlike the record it 
now is had not the heart of humanity thrilled to 
the music of remembrance. The grave is deep, 
but vast are the heavens to which we aspire, and 
glory crowns the dream of youth as well as the 
toil of mid-life and the serene wisdom of age. 



LITERARY FAME 81 

How noble and yet how poor a thing is Fame. 
The ancients said much about its beauty and 
evanescence, and much also about its debasing in- 
fluence over those who gave it the supreme place 
in their hearts. Marcus Aurelius expressed in 
clear and graceful words the feeling of the best 
men and women of his day with regard to all 
earthly glory: 

Mucpbv 5e Kal t) fxr}Kl<rrr] {><rT€po(f>i)/xla, Kal air^j 5^ Karb. Siadoxv v 
dvdpwtrapLuv rdxtrra TedpyjfaiJ.e'pwp, Kal ovk elddrwp oiSt eavroi/i 
ovt£ ye rbv trp6iraKau rtdprjKSra. 

'AXX& rb do^dptbp <re irepurrrdaeL. 'Airt5d>j> ds rb t&xos ttjs tt&p- 
tojp Xrjdrjs Kal rb x& os T °v ^4* eKdrcpa airtlpov atQpos, Kal rb Ktvbv 
rijs airrix'fio'etos, k&I rb ev/xerd^okop Kal &Kparop tup dtp* y\pXp 
doKotipTu/p Kal rb <rrepbp tov rbtrov ip ««» irept,ypd<peTai. "OX?; re yap 
i] 777 a-riyfi^j Kal ra^Tijt ir6<rop yuptdiov i) KarolKrj<ri$ adrrj', Kal kp- 
ravda tr6<roi, Kal diol ripes ot iiraipeffbfiepoi. 

In closing this brief paper the writer would in- 
sist upon an independent spirit as the essential 
element in all enduring work. One must dismiss 
anxiety concerning the passing opinions of the 
men and women who surround him. He must give 
no heed to seducing voices. He must refuse to be 
the mouthpiece of his neighbor's whims and con- 
victions. Schopenhauer has written strong words 
(stronger still in the German), and with them let 
this paper end: 

"The history of literature generally shows that 
all those who made knowledge and insight their goal 
have remained unrecognized and neglected whilst 
those who paraded with the vain show of it re- 
ceived the admiration of their contemporaries, to- 



82 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

gether with the emoluments. ... It is a prime 
condition for doing any great work — any work 
which is to outlive his own age — that a man pay no 
heed to his contemporaries, their views and opin- 
ions, and the praise or blame which they bestow. 
This condition is, however, fulfilled of itself when 
a man does anything really great, and it is fortunate 
that it is so. For if, in producing such a work, he 
were to look to the general opinion or the judgment 
of his colleagues, they would lead him astray at 
every step. Hence, if a man wants to go down to 
posterity, he must withdraw from the influence of 
his own age," 



IV 

BOOK DEDICATIONS 



"If my book shall live, then live thy name, 
Thrice dear and gentle friend; 
What bright meed I have of worthy fame, 
Be thine till time shall end." 

— Old Dedication. 

"The one human element in many a famed book 
is its dedication. Like a flower that blooms in some 
sheltered nook of the far North, and there sheds 
its fragrance amid snow and ice, the kindly dedi- 
cation whispers of love upon the threshold of some 
cold and passionless treatise of abstract truth." 

— "The Hermit." 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 

THE writing of elaborate dedications and 
graceful prefaces was a pleasant custom of 
the olden time. The book was not well presented 
to good literary society that had no carefully 
written preface or introduction in which was set 
forth the peculiar merit of the volume, and in 
which was made the usual debasement of the 
author in a salam of high-sounding words. Some 
of these exordiums, as Calvin's Dedication of his 
Institution to Francis I. of France, and Dr. 
Samuel Johnson's Preface to his edition of 
Shakspeare, are enduring monuments of good and 
scholarly parts. But things are changed now, 
and we are fallen upon the rude and unattractive 
literature of "jerks and starts." Epigrammatic 
and telegraphic styles have jostled and crowded 
from their places the calm and dignified utter- 
ances of older writers. The modern preface is re- 
duced to a pale and ineffectual "foreword," and 
seems destined to become a fore-syllable. Yet 
we have this consolation, and it is by no means 
a poor one, that in parting from the dignity and 
grace of the fathers we have escaped a consider- 
able amount of fulsome adulation. Casaubon's 
"Preface to Polybius" is no longer imitated, but 
it comforts us to know that now no one is so 
wanting in self-respect as to be willing to tread 
meekly in the steps of translators who could dedi- 
85 



86 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

cate their rendering of the Sacred Scriptures to 
"the most high and mighty Prince James." Did 
those venerable translators actually believe that 
Queen Elizabeth was "a bright occidental star of 
most happy memory"? It may be they did; and 
yet we cannot resist the impression that in their 
hearts they knew the Virgin Queen to be the hard 
and unlovely shrew she most certainly was. 

Shorn of dedication and preface, the modern 
feast of letters may be commonplace, but after 
all, is there not a decided gain in self-respect? 
The authors who named themselves "a crumb of 
mortality," "a pinch of dust," and "a puff of 
wind" may have described themselves correctly, 
but we are unable to believe they added anything 
to the dignity of literary art. Many an old-time 
dedication was humiliating to the last degree ; and 
the amount of lying that authors, big and little, 
offered upon the altar of patronage was simply 
astonishing. 

The long and prolix Preface is now dead and 
soon the grass will be green over its unhonored 
grave. Never can any literary resurrection give 
new life to its dry bones. Perhaps the time is not 
far distant when the shorter Preface will also go 
the way of all the living and disappear forever; 
and the book, whatever might have been its man- 
ners under other circumstances, will bolt into our 
best society with not even so much of ceremony 
as a decent bow. But the Dedication will, beyond 
all question, survive. We like to associate our 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 87 

work with those we love. A book is worth more 
to its author when it bears in gracious lines and 
tender phrases the loved one's name. Like a 
sweet and fragrant flower the dainty dedication 
glows in beauty just over the garden wall of some 
volume otherwise cold and possibly unattractive. 
We turn to it again and again, and the book 
seems more inviting. It helps us to think well 
of the author. 

Chief among noble and attractive inscriptions 
is that which accompanies Reiske's edition of the 
Greek Orators. Reiske affixed his wife's portrait 
to the learned and excellent work, and in the 
Preface to his first volume he placed these beau- 
tiful and just words: 

"She is a modest and frugal woman; she loves 
me, and my literary employments, and is an indus- 
trious and skillful assistant. Induced by affection 
for me, she applied herself to the study of Greek 
and Latin under my tuition. She knew neither of 
these languages when we were married ; but she was 
soon able to lighten the multifarious and very se- 
vere labors to be performed in this undertaking. 
The Aldine and Pauline editions she alone com- 
pared; also the fourth Augustine edition. As I had 
taught her the Erasmian pronounciation, she read 
first to me the Morellian copy, while I read those 
in manuscript. She labored unweariedly in ar- 
ranging, correcting and preparing my confused copy 
for the press. As I deeply feel, and publicly ex- 
press my gratitude for her aid, so I trust that pres- 
ent and future generations may hold her name in 
honored remembrance." 



88 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Comte lacked Reiske's calm dignity, but he had 
much of that author's sentiment and tender feel- 
ing when he made this impassioned address to 
Madame de Vaux, six years after her death : 

"Adieu, my unchangeable companion! Adieu, 
my holy Clothilde, who are to me at once wife, sis- 
ter and daughter! Adieu, my dear pupil, and my 
fit colleague. Thy celestial inspiration will domi- 
nate the remainder of my life, public as well as pri- 
vate, and preside over my progress towards perfec- 
tion, purifying my sentiments, ennobling my 
thoughts, and elevating my conduct. Perhaps, as 
the principal reward to the grand tasks yet left me 
to complete under thy powerful invocation, I shall 
inseparably write thy name with my own, in the 
latest remembrances of a grateful humanity." 

I do not know precisely why, but always 
Comte's address to Clothilde de Vaux reminds me 
of the inscription which John Stuart Mill placed 
upon the stone over his wife's tomb in the cem- 
etery at Avignon, France. It was January 5, 
1886, as I discover from my note book, when I 
stood by the last resting place of that gifted 
woman, and copied upon a slip of paper these 
lines: 

The Beloved Memory 

of 

Harriet Mill, 

The dearly loved and deeply regretted 

Wife of John Stuart Mill. 

Her great and loving heart, 

Her noble soul, 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 89 

Her clear, powerful, original and 

Comprehensive intellect 
Made her the guide and support, 
The instructor in wisdom, 
And the example in goodness, 
As she was the sole earthly delight, 
Of those who had the happiness to belong 
to her. 
As earnest for all public good 
As she was generous and devoted 
To all who surrounded her, 
Her influence has been felt 
In many of the greatest 
Improvements of the age, 
And will be in those still to come. 
Were there even a few hearts and in- 
tellects like hers, 
This earth would already become 
The hoped for heaven. 
She died, 
To the irreparable loss of those 
Who survive her, 
At Avignon, Nov. 3, 1858. 

John Stuart Mill and his wife now repose in 
the same tomb. During my brief visit to Avig- 
non I had the good fortune to occupy the room 
in the little French inn in which through long 
and lonely hours the great philosopher and distin- 
guished author watched in anguish of heart by 
the bedside of his dear wife. Very happy was 
the married life of Mill. His wife shared his 
tastes, his culture, and his opinions, and in all his 
literary work there was abundant evidence of her 
co-operation. Her beautiful soul made life radi- 



90 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

ant with a love which he called divine. These are 
the words in which Mill dedicates his immortal 
"Essay on Liberty" to his wife years after her 
death : 

"To the beloved and deplored memory of her 
who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all 
that is best in my writings, — the friend and wife 
whose exalted sense of truth and right was my 
strongest incitement, and whose approbation was 
my chief reward, — I dedicate this volume. Like all 
that I have written for many years, it belongs as 
much to her as to me; but the work as it stands 
has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inesti- 
mable advantage of her review; some of the most 
important portions having been reserved for a more 
careful re-examination, which they are never des- 
tined to receive. Were I but capable of interpret- 
ing to the world one-half the great thoughts and 
noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I 
should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than 
is ever likely to arise from any thing that I can 
write unprompted and unassisted by her all but un- 
rivalled wisdom." 

Balzac dedicated his "Modeste Mignon" to a 
Polish lady. Who the lady was he does not tell 
us, but I think we are safe in saying she was none 
other than the Countess Hanska, with whom the 
gifted writer lived in happy wedlock a brief sea- 
son which he has elsewhere described as the sum- 
mer of his earthly existence: 

TO A POLISH LADY. 

Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through 
love, witch through fancy, child by faith, aged by 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 91 

experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant by 
hope, mother through sorrow, poet in thy dreams, 
to thee belongs this book, in which thy love, thy 
fancy, thy experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy 
dreams, are the warp through which is shot a woof 
less brilliant than the poetry of the soul, whose ex- 
pression when it shines upon thy countenance is to 
those who love thee what the characters of a lost 
language are to scholars. 

Worthy of a place among beautiful dedications 
are the words with which Loti prefaces his "From 
Lands of Exile": 

"I dedicate this to the memory of a noble and 
exquisite woman, whose never to be forgotten image 
rises before me strangely vivid whenever I have 
time to think. These notes from the faraway Yel- 
low Land were originally written for her alone. I 
used to send them to her out of the distance as a 
sort of chat to amuse her during the long, weary 
months while she was slowly fading out of life, 
slowly and with a serene smile." 

The brilliant author is not satisfied with his 
own graceful lines, but follows them with a deli- 
cate and touching description of his dear friend. 
He brings the charming invalid before us in such 
a way as to show her refinement and fascination. 
He so associates the entire book with her delight- 
ful personality that one can never think of it 
without beholding as in a vision the enchanting 
woman whose memory its enduring pages en- 
shrine. 

With these pathetically beautiful lines Eu- 



92 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

gene Field dedicates "A Little Book of Western 
Verse" to his sister: 

"A dying mother gave to you 
Her child a many years ago; 
How in your gracious love he grew, 
You know, dear, patient heart, you know. 

The mother's child you fostered then 
Salutes you now, and bids you take 

These little children of his pen, 

And love them for the author's sake. 

To you I dedicate this book, 

And, as you read it line by line, 

Upon its faults as kindly look 

As you have always looked on mine. 

Tardy the offering is and weak, 

Yet were I happy if I knew 
These children had the power to speak 

My love and gratitude to you." 

In all these graceful and touching dedications 
it is the heart rather than the mind that speaks. 
And it is just because the dedication furnishes so 
happy an opportunity for the expression of kind- 
ness and affection that it is likely to endure when 
the dull and wearisome preface and many another 
adjunct of the published book or printed poem 
has been forever abandoned. In the dedication 
the author finds companionship, and shares with 
wife or friend the praise which he hopes his lit- 
erary work may bring him. The companionship 
is sometimes far more enduring than one finds in 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 93 

a brief life-time of a few years. Two hundred and 
fifty years ago Sir William Davenant wrote and 
published his "Madagascar," and today two dear 
friends live in equal remembrance with him in 
the graceful dedication : 

"If these poems live, may their memories by 
whom they are cherished, Endymion Poster and H. 
Jarmyn live with them/' 

Davenant's dedication has been imitated many 
times. Three years after the publication of 
"Madagascar" Sheppard dedicated his "Epi- 
grams, Theological, Philosophical and Romantic" 
in almost the same words : 

"If these Epigrams survive (maugre the vo- 
racitie of Time) let the names of Christopher Clap- 
ham and James Winter (to whom the author dedi- 
cateth these his devours) live with them." 

The anonymous author of a curious and now 
scarce poetical tract, "The Martyrdom of St. 
George of Cappadocia, Titular Patron of Eng- 
land and the Most Noble Order of the Garter," 
which appeared in 1614, dedicated his work : 

"To all the Nobles, Honourable and Worthy in 
Great Britaine bearing the name of George; and to 
all others, the true friends of Christian Chivalrie, 
lovers of Saint George's name and virtues." 

Richard Brathwayte prefixed to his "Strappado 
for the Divell" (1615) the following odd "Epis- 
tle Dedicatorie" : 



94 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"To all usurers, broakers, and promoters, ser- 
geants, catch-poles, and regraters, ushers, panders, 
suburbes traders, cockneies that have manie fathers; 
ladies, monkies, parachitoes, marmosites and cato- 
mitoes, falls, high-tires and rebatoes, false-haires, 
periwigges, monchatoes, grave gregorians and shee- 
painters — send I greeting at adventures, and to all 
such as be evill, by Strappado for the Divell." 

William Hornby inscribed his "Scourge of 
Drunkenness" thus: 

"To all the impious and relentless-hearted ruf- 
fians and roysterers under Bacchus' regiment, 
Cornu-apes wisheth remorse of conscience and more 
increase of grace." 

Cornu-apes was a name Hornby had assumed. 
He followed the inscription with some verses of 
little value, and printed upon the title page the 
picture of a wild man very like an ape, smoking 
a pipe with one hand and holding a scourge in 
the other. 

The three inscriptions last quoted are not in any 
true sense of the word dedications. Dedicating a 
book to the memory of all the men in Great Brit- 
ain who may happen to have the name of George 
is like erecting a grave-stone to all who have died 
bearing the name of John Smith. As for Horn- 
by's inscription, it is a mere eccentricity. 

Always a true dedication is a matter of feel- 
ing. It is a thing of the heart. Though into it 
a delicate humor or pleasantry may sometimes in- 
trude, it can still never be other than gracious, 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 95 

dignified, and affectionate. A good illustration 
of what a book-dedication should be is found in 
the inscription which Martha Baker Dunn has 
given her "Memory Street": 

"To my father, a man whose brain is as clear as 
his conscience, and whose long record of stainless 
purity and integrity is his children's best heritage, 
this book is affectionately dedicated." 

General Brinkerhoof thus dedicates his "Recol- 
lections of a Lifetime": 

"To My Wife. For forty-eight years, through 
sunshine and through cloudy weather, she has been 
my traveling companion in life's journey, and in all 
the vicissitudes of those years she has done more 
than her share in overcoming hindrances and in 
making our journey enjoyable; in all the vicissitudes 
of life she has been my counsellor and helper, and 
always ready to make a sacrifice herself for my 
advancement or comfort. In short, she has not 
only made my home a haven of rest and encourage- 
ment, but she has made my public career possible; 
and if I have accomplished anything of value, it is 
to her wise provision and optimistic faith in Provi- 
dential care it is largely due." 

The author of the little book, "As Seen by Me," 
has furnished her readers a very delightful dedi- 
cation, but it is to be regretted that she did not 
give them the name of her "speck of humanity." 

"To that most interesting speck of humanity, all 
perpetual motion and kindling intelligence and 
sweetness unspeakable, my little nephew Billy, ab- 
sence from whom racked my spirit with its most 



96 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

unappeasable pangs of homesickness, and whose 
constant presence in my study since my return has 
spared the public no small amount of pain." 

It seems to us that always in every book dedi- 
cation and in every mortuary inscription the name 
of the person memorized should be given. Why 
carve upon the grave-stone "My Dear Father"? 
If the name is so sacred it may not be transferred 
to marble, why refer to the relationship? The 
sorrowing heart knows for whom it sorrows, and 
the mere relationship with date and possibly a line 
of verse or of Scripture has for the passing 
stranger no significance of any kind. In future 
years when all who were related are dead it may 
still be a matter of interest to know where some 
one, humble in his day but of importance now in 
local history, rests. We like to see something of 
the story of the man's life upon the stone that 
covers his dust. Soon enough all earthly records 
will be effaced. Let us not anticipate time and 
hurry on oblivion. 

There was about the old-fashioned book-dedi- 
cation not infrequently a vulgar and obsequious 
commercialism. The author had a patron, or he 
was diligently seeking for one with wealth and 
high social standing. The Dedication was too 
often for sale. There is record of an author who, 
publishing a book in many volumes, dedicated 
each separate volume to a different patron, and so 
harvested a multifarious reward before any of 
the injured contributors to his exchequer discov- 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 97 

ered the deception. The convenience of having 
a literary sponsor was very great; sometimes it 
was an absolute necessity. I doubt not a consid- 
erable number of good authors have fallen into 
obscurity and many have failed of a publisher 
through want of some titled ignoramus whose 
name and station would certainly have impressed 
the book-selling fraternity. Some of the old in- 
scriptions are exceedingly humiliating. The 
author who described himself as a certain lord- 
ship's "door-mat" was not by any means the most 
servile of the writing brotherhood. A very re- 
spectable author described the noble lady whose 
name graced his dedication, and whose money 
made his book possible, as "a phoenix feeding on 
perfumes." Perhaps he really thought she re- 
sembled something of the kind. She may have 
been beautiful, notwithstanding the commercial 
relation she sustained to author and book. The 
old patron system had its good points, and was 
often of advantage to both writer and benefactor, 
but it had also its disadvantages. It degraded 
literary art and destroyed personal independence. 
It did more. Sometimes it cut up, root and 
branch, all reverence for sacred things, and even 
for God Himself. What shall be said of a dedi- 
cation like this which a French writer bestowed 
upon Cardinal Richelieu: 

"Who has seen your face without being seized 
by those softened terrors which made the prophet 
shudder when God showed the beams of his glory! 



98 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

But as he whom they dared not approach in the 
burning brush, and in the noise of thunders, ap- 
peared to them sometimes in the freshness of the 
zephyrs, so the softness of your august counte- 
nance dissipates at the same time and changes into 
dew the small vapours which cover its majesty." 

It is only fair to say that the author who in- 
dited the above dedication was upon the death of 
Richelieu conscience-stricken, and in a second edi- 
tion of his book suppressed the blasphemous in- 
scription, and, by way of penance, inscribed the 
book to Jesus Christ. When James I. of England 
answered Conrad Vorstius' book on the attributes 
of God, he saw no impropriety in the following 
dedication : 

"To | the Honour | of our Lord and | Saviour 
Jesus Christ, | the Eternal Sonne of the | Eternal 
Father, the onely eEANGPflnOS, Mediatour, | and 
Reconciler | of Mankind, | In signe of Thankeful- 
nesse, | His most humble | and most obliged | Ser- 
vant, James by the Grace of | God, King of Great 
Britaine, | France and Ireland, | Defender of the 
Faith, | Doeth dedicate, and consecrate | this his 
Declaration." 

Hundreds of books, good, bad and indifferent, 
have been dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who is 
variously addressed as the Mother of God, the 
Queen of Heaven, the Lady of Angels, and the 
Rose of Mercy. Thousands of appellations of 
honor and praise have been showered upon her by 
Roman Catholic authors, and in some cases by 
Protestant writers as well. A number of books 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 99 

have been dedicated to the Apostles, among whom 
the Beloved John seems always to be favored, not- 
withstanding the peculiar eminence of Peter. 

In ancient pagan days, before men turned their 
thoughts to the Holy Virgin of our Christian 
faith, Hippolytus dedicated a crown to the beau- 
tiful Diana, the goddess of hunting, in these ten- 
der and gracious words: 

"To thee, O lady, I offer this crown, formed of 
flowers from a pure meadow, where no shepherd 
thinks to lead his flock, nor scythe has come, but 
the bee skims over the pure spring meadow, which 
the morning waters with river-dews. To persons 
whose knowledge is not acquired by learning, but 
whose wisdom is inspired by Nature in all things 
always, to them it is allowed to cull the flowers, but 
not to the wicked." 

Renan's "Life of Jesus" (C. E. Wilbour's 
translation) contains what seems to the writer of 
this paper the most lovely dedication in all litera- 
ture. It is possibly too long, but its exceeding 
great beauty would make us loth to lose a single 
line. We give it here as it is found on the open- 
ing page of the gifted Frenchman's "Vie de 
Jesus": 

"To the Pure Spirit of My Sister Henrietta, Who 

Died at Byblus, Sept. 24, 1861. 

Do you remember, from your rest in the bosom 
of God, those long days at Ghazir, where, alone 
with you, I wrote these pages, inspired by the 
scenes we had just traversed? Silent by my side 
you read every leaf, and copied it as soon as writ- 



100 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

ten, while the sea, the villages, the ravines, the 
mountains, were spread out at our feet. 

When the overwhelming light of the sun had 
given place to the innumerable army of stars, your 
fine and delicate questions, your discreet doubts, 
brought me back to the sublime object of our com- 
mon thoughts. 

One day you told me you should love this book, 
first, because it had been written with you, and also 
because it pleased you. If sometimes you feared 
for it the narrow judgments of frivolous men, you 
were always persuaded that spirits truly religious 
would be pleased with it. 

In the midst of these sweet meditations Death 
struck us both with his wing; the sleep of fever 
seized us both at the same hour. I woke alone ! . . . 
You sleep now in the land of Adonis, near the holy 
Byblus and the sacred waters where the women of 
the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. 

Reveal to me, O my good genius, to me whom you 
loved, those truths which master Death, prevent us 
from fearing, and make us almost love it." 

This is the witty and kindly dedication that 
Lamb affixed to his "Essays of Elia": 

To the Friendly and Judicious Reader. 

Who will take these papers as they were meant; 
not understanding every thing perversely in the 
absolute and literal sense, but giving fair construc- 
tion as to an after-dinner conversation, allowing 
for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of 
first thoughts; and not remembering, for the pur- 
pose of an after taunt, words spoken peradventure 
after the fourth glass. The author wishes (what 
he would will for himself) plenty of good friends 
to stand by him, good books to solace him, prosper- 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 101 

ous events to all his honest undertakings, and a 
candid interpretation to his most hasty words and 
actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of 
them will purchase his book too) he greets with the 
curt invitation of Timon, 'Uncover, dogs, and lap/ 
or he dismisses them with the confident security of 
the philosopher, 'You beat but in the case of 

Elia.' 
Nothing, it seems to the writer of this paper, 
could be better in its way than the inscription 
which introduces "Tristam Shandy": 

To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt. 
Sir, — Never poor wight of a dedicator had less 
hopes from his dedication, than I have from this of 
mine; for it is written in a large corner of the 
kingdom, and in a retired thatch'd house, where I 
live in a constant endeavour to fence against the 
infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by 
winter; being firmly persuaded that every time a 
man smiles, but much more so when he laughs, that 
it adds something to this fragment of life. 

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this 

book by taking it (not under your protection, it 

must protect itself, but) into the country with you; 

when if I am ever told it has made you smile, or 

can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment's 

pain, I shall think myself as happy as a minister of 

State, perhaps much happier than any one (one 

only excepted) that I have ever read or heard of. 

I am, great Sir, 

(and what is more to your Honour), 

I am, good Sir, 

Your well-wisher, 

And most humble Fellow Subject, 

The Author. 



102 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

The whimsical spirit of the humorist and novel- 
ist is apparent in every line of the foregoing 
inscription, with just enough of implied pathos 
to awaken sympathy. Poor Sterne was not ten- 
der-hearted. He was a cold and licentious egotist 
who, to use the words of another, "preferred 
whining over a dead ass to relieving a living 
mother." A Frenchman tells us that ''there was 
nothing good in the man, though his 'Tristam 
Shandy' is one of the best of books if one likes 
the kind." He did not have the frank out-and- 
out sensuality of Fielding, with whom he is some- 
times compared, but he had all the rotten scandal 
of the worst writers of his time. Taine lets his 
readers into the spirit of the man when he writes : 
"That an epicurean delights in detailing the 
pretty sins of a pretty woman is nothing wonder- 
ful; but that a novelist takes pleasure in watch- 
ing the bedroom of a musty, fusty old couple, in 
observing the consequences of the fall of a burn- 
ing chestnut in a pair of breeches, in detailing 
the questions of Mrs. Wadman on the conse- 
quences of wounds in the groin, can only be ex- 
plained by the aberration of a perverted fancy, 
which finds its amusement in repugnant ideas, as 
spoiled palates are pleased by the repugnant fla- 
vor of decayed cheese." 

The end of Sterne was a sad one. Alone and 
deserted, while some of his companions were ca- 
rousing in a neighboring street, he passed unla- 
mented to his grave, in which he was not allowed 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 103 

to rest. Two nights after his burial, he was dug 
up by grave-robbers who sent him down to Cam- 
bridge, where Mr. Collignon, the distinguished 
Professor of Anatomy, dissected him before some 
of the medical fraternity. 

Formal and stilted in its phrasing and in its 
loud-sounding, but seemingly insincere, expres- 
sion of humility, Byron's inscription of "Sardan- 
apalus" may be taken as an illustration of what 
a book dedication should not be. 

To 

THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE 

a stranger presumes to offer the homage 

of a literary vassal to his liege lord, 

the first of existing writers 

who has created the literature of his own country 

and illustrated that of Europe. 

The unworthy production which the author ventures 

to inscribe to him 

is entitled 

SARDANAPALUS 

It is difficult to believe that Byron ever re- 
garded anything that his pen had given the world 
as an "unworthy production." Certainly the 
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" gave the 
men of his day a different impression. Byron 
never lost sight of himself. Of himself he 
thought and dreamed. It has been truly said, "He 
could not metamorphose himself into another. 
The sorrows, revolts, and travels described in his 
books are all his own. He does not invent, he ob- 
serves; he does not create, he transcribes. His 



104 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

copy is darkly exaggerated, but it is a copy." 
Surely the keen-sighted Goethe must have discov- 
ered without much effort what kind of humility 
it was the great English poet brought him in the 
dedication of "Sardanapalus." 

Thackeray's inscription of "Pendennis" is a 
beautiful tribute to a dear friend and an able 
physician : 

To 

DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON 

My dear Doctor, — Thirteen months ago, when it 
seemed likely that this story had come to a close, a 
kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence, in 
all probability, I never should have risen but for 
your constant watchfulness and skill. I like to re- 
call your great goodness and kindness (as well as 
many acts of others, showing quite a surprising 
friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kind- 
ness and friendship were most needed and welcome. 

And as you would take no other fee but thanks, 
let me record them here in behalf of me and mine, 
and subscribe myself, 

Yours most sincerely and gratefully, 

W. M. Thackeray. 

Thus Stanley dedicates to the memory of his 
mother his "Lectures on the History of the Jew- 
ish Church": 

To the dear memory of Her 

by whose firm faith, calm wisdom, and tender 

sympathy, 

these and all other labours 

have for years been sustained and cheered: 

TO MY MOTHER 

this work, 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 1105 

which shared her latest care, 

is now dedicated 

in sacred and everlasting remembrance. 

The following are two excellent dedications 
from the poet Swinburne. The first, which is af- 
fixed to "The Tale of Baten," throws a strong 
and noble light upon the heart of the great writer, 
and rebukes those who malevolently represent him 
as devoid of natural affection. 

TO MY MOTHER 

Love that holds life and death in fee, 
Deep as the clear, unsounded sea 
And sweet as life or death can be, 
Lays here my hope, my heart, and me 

Before you, silent, in a song. 
Since the old, wild tale, made new, found grace, 
When half sung through, before your face, 
It needs must live a springtime space, 

While April suns grow strong. 

The second dedication prefaces the matchless 
"Atlanta in Calydon" : 

TO THE MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 

I now dedicate, with equal affection, reverence, 
and regret, a poem inscribed to him while yet alive 
in words which are retained because they were laid 
before him; and to which, rather than cancel them, 
I have added such others as were evoked by the 
news of his death : that though losing the pleasure, 
I may not lose the honour of inscribing in front of 
my work the highest of contemporary names. 

Worthy of a place among the dedications to 
which attention has been called is one with which 



106 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

F. Hopkinson Smith has enriched his delightful 
little book, "A White Umbrella in Mexico" : 

"I dedicate this book to the most charming of 
all the senoritas I know. The one whose face lin- 
gers longest in my memory when I am away, and 
whose arms open widest when I return. The most 
patient of my listeners, the most generous of my 
critics, my little daughter, Marion." 

A curious and interesting thing in connection 
with the literature of mortuary and book dedica- 
tions is the fact that domestic animals have had a 
share of remembrance in some popular and in 
not a few learned works. Their pet names have 
also been chiseled in the stones that mark their 
graves; and there are now a number of burial 
gardens set aside for cats, dogs, birds, and even 
creatures of the barn-yard. A cemetery for cats 
has been opened near London. The prospectus, 
in which it is called "The Zoological Necropolis/ 1 
gives an imposing array of patrons, among whom 
are bankers, brokers, and men and women of 
wealth and social standing. Near Newport, the 
fashionable summer home of American million- 
aires, is an animal cemetery where repose under 
marble and surrounded by costly and fragrant 
flowers, the bodies of polo ponies, angora cats, 
and even a few monkeys that have been "socially 
prominent." But all this is as nothing when we 
consider the animal cemetery at St. Ouen. To 
borrow the words of a modern magazine writer: 






BOOK DEDICATIONS 107 

"Here are monuments of the most elaborate de- 
scription, and fresh wreaths everywhere. The 
most striking tomb is that of a Saint Bernard who 
saved forty persons, but was killed by the forty- 
first — a hero of whose history one would like to 
know more, but the gatekeeper is curiously unin- 
structed. 

I walked among these myriad graves, all very 
recent in date, and was not a little touched by the 
affection that had gone to their making. I noted a 
few names: Petit Bob, Esperance (whose portrait 
is in bas-relief, accompanied by that of its mas- 
ter), Peggie, Fan, Pincke, Manon, Dick, Siko, 
Lonette (aged 17 years and 4 months), Toby, Kiki, 
Ben-Ben ( ' toujours gai, Jldele et caressant ' — 
what an epitaph to strive for!), Javotte, Nana, 
Lili, Dedjaz, Trinquefort, Teddy, and Prince 
(whose mausoleum is superb), Fifi (who saved 
lives), Colette, Dash (a spaniel with a little bronze 
sparrow perching on his tomb), Boy, Bizon (who 
saved his owner's life and therefore has this . sou- 
venir), and Mosque (regrette et Jidele ami). There 
must be hundreds and hundreds altogether, and it 
will not be long before another 'God's Acre* is re- 
quired." 

"In due time," says the Pall Mall Gazette, 
"we shall have cats' undertakers." The simple 
truth of the matter is that we already have under- 
takers in our large cities who devote themselves 
to the burial of domestic animals. There was not 
long ago in New York a dog's funeral, and the 
little creature, for he was a diminutive lap-dog, 
was encased in an elegant satin-lined casket which 
was in turn inclosed in a fine oaken box. The 
burial was in a cemetery near Nyack, N. Y. The 



108 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

cost of a casket and funeral for a dog whose mor- 
tal remains repose in Woodlawn cemetery was 
named to the writer, and as near as he remem- 
bers, it was something like one hundred and fifty 
dollars. On the stones that mark the graves of 
various pets in the cemetery for animals near 
London one may read some very touching inscrip- 
tions. Harriet L. Keeler, who wrote a charming 
book on "Our Native Trees," dedicates her work 
to two pet dogs, Phyllis and Nicholas; she de- 
scribes them as her "loving companions through 
field and wood." An English lady inscribed her 
book to her favorite cat, whose prowess in captur- 
ing mice is duly celebrated. John Burroughs, the 
distinguished naturalist and essayist, dedicated 
his "Bird and Bough," a little book of delightful 
verses, thus: "To the kinglet that sang in my 
evergreens in October, and made me think it was 
May." Even the canary bird has winged its way 
into the charmed circle, and readers far and near 
may listen to the music of its song in notes that 
link the feathered creature of the air with the 
charm of poetry and romance. Why should not 
the animals be remembered? The old Egyptians 
worshipped the cat under the name of Aelurus. 
It was a tradition that Diana assumed the form 
of a cat. Surely if religion is in no wise dishon- 
ored by Tabby's presence, our modern books are 
not diminished in dignity by an occasional dedi- 
cation to a sparrow, a squirrel, or a dog. So re- 
nowned a poet as Tasso celebrated the virtues and 



BOOK DEDICATIONS 109 

immortalized the name of a pet cat; and Chau- 
teaubriand has preserved for us, and for all the 
world, the name and exploits of the famous Mi- 
cetto. 



V 

AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 



Murcielagos literarios 

Que haceis a pluma y a pelo, 
Si quereis vivir con todos, 

Miraos en este espejo." 

— Yriarte, 



(( 



Y ahora digo yo ; Llene un volumen 
De disparates un autor famoso 3 
Y si no le alebaren, que me emplumen." 

— Yriarte. 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 

VICTOR HUGO had many and long argu- 
ments with his friend Schoelcher, who did 
not believe in a future life. One day when Schoel- 
cher had given religion a peculiarly bad name, 
Hugo retorted: "Schoelcher, you are quite right. 
Not every one is immortal. Upon a certain day 
Dante wrote two stanzas on a sheet of paper, and 
left them on his desk while he exercised in the open 
air. No sooner was the great poet out of sight 
than the first stanza said to the second, 'It is a 
fine thing to be written by Dante, for that makes 
us immortal!' The second stanza answered, 'I 
am not so sure of that ; do you really believe that 
both of us shall live forever?' In a moment or 
two Dante returned, re-read the stanzas, and de- 
ciding that the second was worthless, erased 
it." Whatever may be the fate of that deli- 
cate and ethereal part of our human construction 
which theologians call the Soul, it is true beyond 
doubt that some men live many years, if not for- 
ever, in the history of the race or in its wonderful 
literature because the Power that created them 
made them worthy of remembrance, while count- 
less millions of men and women in all lands and 
ages, strive as earnestly as they may, are fore- 
doomed to oblivion. 

It is as Sir Thomas Browne tells us in his "Urn 
Burial," "Oblivion is not to be hired." The 
113 



114 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

greater part must be content to be as though they 
had not been — to be in the register of God, not 
in the record of man. It is hard to find in all 
history a greater tragedy than that of the unre- 
mitting but futile toil of inconsequent persons to 
make for themselves places and names in the en- 
during memorials of mankind. "Mute, inglorious 
Miltons" crowd our cemeteries. Georges Ohnet's 
"Le Maitre des Forges" is one of the good books 
of the world, but it came very near sharing the 
unhappy fate of Dante's second stanza. Every 
publisher in Paris returned the manuscript. The 
author, disappointed and disgusted, threw the 
work into the open grate wherein smouldered a 
partly extinguished fire. As the flames touched 
the paper, Ohnet's accomplished wife, who had 
herself assisted in the composition of the book, 
came into the room and snatched the precious 
manuscript from its perilous position. "We have 
money enough and can publish the book our- 
selves," she said, "and it may be those brutal pub- 
lishers will yet rue the day they let 'Le Maitre des 
Forges' slip through their stupid fingers." The 
book sold faster than Ohnet and his wife could 
print it and a score of managers sought to obtain 
dramatization rights, which Konig alone secured 
after much work, and the outlay of a considerable 
sum of money. For three hundred nights a bril- 
liant German actress sustained the character of 
Claire de Beaulieu, and it is said that when the 
curtain dropped upon the last performance she 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 115 

burst into tears because she had lost the dear 
friend she had so long impersonated. Ohnet was 
fortunate in two things : He had a cultivated and 
sympathetic wife who knew good literature and 
could help him in its construction, and he had also 
enough money to render him independent of the 
publishing fraternity. A good wife and plenty 
of money! What more can a man want in this 
little life of ours? Yet with even these one may 
fail in the world of letters if there be not sufficient 
genius for the work, and with genius it is even 
possible to succeed without either the counsel of a 
wife or the magic of money. It is doubtless the 
duty of every man to cultivate a forgiving spirit, 
and no one will deny that "Love your enemies" 
includes the obligation to think kindly of one's 
publishers. Yet we are most of us very human. 
If Dante could rejoice when he saw havoc made 
of Filippo Argenti by the people of the mire, 
surely so humble an individual as the writer of this 
paper may hope to escape with a whole skin when 
he rejoices in the sad discomfiture of those Paris 
publishers. 

But not all the sinners live in Prance. English 
publishers have made mistakes, and some very 
serious ones. Long years ago "Tristram Shandy" 
was offered to a bookseller at York, and that same 
bookseller, turning up his nose at what he 
thought the miserable nonsense of a fool, in- 
formed Sterne that "the stuff" was not worth 
printing. "The sermon in Tristram Shandy," 



116 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

wrote Sterne in his preface to his "Sermons," 
"was printed by itself some years ago, but could 
find neither purchasers nor readers." Its appear- 
ance in the immortal work named created so great 
a demand for all of the eccentric preacher's dis- 
courses that an edition in eight volumes was at 
once projected. De Foe, though at the time a 
writer of acknowledged ability, traveled over all 
England endeavoring to find a publisher for his 
"Robinson Crusoe." Murray would not give 
Horace and James Smith twenty pounds for the 
"Rejected Addresses," though later when the book 
had made for itself a name, he was glad to pay one 
hundred and thirty pounds for the right to issue 
a single edition. He could well afford that 
amount, for every copy was disposed of at once, 
a large part of the edition being sold before pub- 
lication. After "Vanity Fair" had been printed 
in Colburrfs Magazine, a publisher sa?d that he 
did not want it because public interest had been 
exhausted by its brief career in the periodical. A 
printer and bookseller at Bath purchased Jane 
Austen's "Northanger Abbey" for ten pounds, 
and then did not dare to risk more money on what 
he accounted a ''shaky venture." So great was 
his cowardice that the book remained unpublished 
a number of years. 

Charles Wolfe was a good man who preached 
the Gospel in a desolate and lonely part of Ire- 
land. His parishioners were rude and poor, and 
his home was humble and bare of adornment. By 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 117 

himself, without intellectual sympathy and com- 
panionship, the Irish clergyman kept the sacred 
fire burning upon the beautiful altar of literature. 
When the labors of the day were ended, his library 
of a few books afforded him a safe and blessed re- 
treat from the poverty and wretchedness which 
his parish duties compelled him to witness. It was 
his good fortune to write an "Ode on the Death of 
Sir John Moore," that Byron pronounced one of 
the best short poems in the English language. He 
himself, though a man of unusual humility of 
spirit, thought the lines good and sent them to the 
most prominent magazine in England. The edi- 
tor returned the manuscript and pronounced the 
poem mere doggerel. He could find no publisher 
and so, in sheer desperation, he gave the gem to 
an obscure Irish paper, and it was printed for 
glory alone. 

Now that attention has been called to the lonely 
name of Charles Wolfe, it may interest the reader 
to know, if he does not already know, that the 
Irish poet's grave is in Clonmel Parish church- 
yard, which was in his day the cemetery of 
Queenstown. Mrs. Piatt, an American lady of 
rare poetic gifts who has written several books 
of delightful verse, often visited that grave when 
her husband was United States consul at Queens- 
town. In a volume of poems which she published 
in 1885 there are some pleasing lines about 
Wolfe's last resting place, and among them are 
these : 



118 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"Where the graves are many, we looked for one, 

Oh, the Irish rose was red 
And the dark stones saddened the setting sun 

With the names of the early dead. 
Then a child, who, somehow, had heard of him 

In the land we loved so well, 
Kept sipping the grass till the dew was dim 

In the churchyard of Clonmel. 

But the sexton came. 'Can you tell us where 

Charles Wolfe is buried?' 'I can. 
See, that is his grave in the corner there. 

(Ay, he was a clever man, 
If God had spared him!) It's many that come 

To be asking for him,' said he. 
But the boy kept whispering, 'Not a drum 

Was heard,' in the dusk to me." 

The poem goes on to tell how the gray sexton 
"tore a vine from the wall of the roofless church" 
where the poet's dust reposed, and swept from the 
grave the incumbering leaves ''that the withering 
year let fall," disclosing upon the stone an in 
scription scarcely legible and covered with moss 
that had to be removed before a single line could 
be made out. 

Mr. Armistead C. Gordon, in a communication 
to the New York Times Saturday Review of Books 
and Art t under the date of July 15, 1902, wrote: 

"Ten years after the lad had sought for the 
poet's grave in the grass of the Clonmel church- 
yard, Katherine Tynan, herself one of the most 
melodious and lovely of the younger Irish poets, 
wrote 'Poets in Exile/ a prose description of the 
Piatts in Queenstown, in which she narrates the 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 119 

boy's untimely death. In Clonmel Parish Church- 
yard, not far from the Priory, lies the second boy, 
who was drowned in Queenstown harbor, just be- 
low the town, in 1884 — a tragedy which evoked the 
deepest sympathy. Readers of Mrs. Piatt's poetry 
will remember her poem about Charles Wolfe's 
grave. The golden-haired child who kept repeating 
'Not a drum was heard' is now the poet's neighbor 
in Clonmel Parish Churchyard. 

ct Young poet, I wonder did you care, 

Did it move you in your rest 
To have that child with his golden hair 

From the mighty woods of the West 
Repeating your verse of his own sweet will 

To the sound of the twilight bell, 
Years after your beating heart was still 

In the churchyard of Clonmel? 

There were some English publishers who re- 
jected "Jane Eyre." I believe one of them did 
not think the book was moral. Before Prescott 
gave Bentley a chance to print "The History of 
Ferdinand and Isabella," two publishers of re- 
nown returned the manuscript, and one of them 
was good enough to tell the author that his work 
was quite too dull and commonplace for English 
readers. Whatever may be said for or against 
the incumbents of Saint Peter's Chair who put so 
much of this world's best literature under eccle- 
siastical ban, certain it is that neither French nor 
English publishers are infallible. Yet with all 
their faults they are more to my mind than are 
the vain-glorious men who figure in papers and 
magazines as critics. Publishers have money at 



120 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

stake, unless they make the author pay for the 
printing of his own books, but critics who damn 
volumes they do not take the trouble to read, risk 
not a single dollar. They do not even come out 
into the open and show themselves. The author 
is tried and condemned without knowing even the 
name of his accuser. No stupidity of any pub- 
lisher can hold the candle to a paragraph like 
this from the Quarterly Review for April, 1818, 
in which Mr. John Wilson Croker discusses 
"Endymion" : 

"This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he 
is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as 
diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd 
than his prototype, who, though he impudently pre- 
sumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and 
to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet 
generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has ad- 
vanced no dogmas which he is bound to support by 
examples; his nonsense is therefore quite gratui- 
tous ; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten 
by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than 
rivals the insanity of his own poetry." 

Here is another charming specimen of critical 
discernment and acuteness which purports to be 
a review of Caryle's "French Revolution." It 
made its appearance in the Athenaeum for May 
20th, 1837: 

"Originality of thought is unquestionably the 
best excuse for writing a book; originality of style 
is a rare and refreshing merit; but it is paying 
rather dear for one's whistle to qualify for obtain- 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 121 

ing it in the University of Bedlam. Originality, 
without justness of thought, is but novelty of error; 
and originality of style, without sound taste and 
discretion, is sheer affectation. Thus, as ever, the 
corruptio optimi turns out to be pessima; the abor- 
tive attempt to be more than nature has made us, 
and to add a cubit to our stature, ends by placing 
us below what we might be if contented with being 
simply and unaffectedly ourselves. There is not, 
perhaps, a more decided mark of the decadence of 
literature than the frequency of such extravagance. 
The applicability of these remarks to the 'His- 
tory of the French Revolution,' now before us, will 
be understood by such of our readers as are fa- 
miliar with Mr. Carlyle's contributions to our 
periodical literature. But it is one thing to put 
forth a few pages of quaintness, neologism, and a 
whimsical coxcombry, and another to carry such 
questionable qualities through three long volumes 
of misplaced persiflage and flippant pseudo philo- 
sophy. To such a pitch of extravagance and ab- 
surdity are these peculiarities exalted in the vol- 
umes before us that we should pass them over in 
silence, as altogether unworthy of criticism, if we 
did not know that the rage for German literature 
may bring such writing into fashion with the ar- 
dent and unreflecting." 

American publishers may have a long account 
to settle, but they are not to be classed with their 
brethren across the sea. It is true that Emerson 
was viewed with suspicion when he published his 
first book, and it is also true that it was a long 
time before that book was appreciated. No one 
had faith in Thoreau's genius. At the time Syl- 
vanus Cobb was charming American readers 



122 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

through the columns of the New York Ledger 
with thrilling stories of love and adventure, 
Thoreau was industriously hunting for a pub- 
lisher. He looked far and near, but no publisher 
appeared upon the horizon. Lew Wallace inter- 
viewed nearly every publishing house from Boston 
to San Francisco before the Harpers with some 
misgivings consented to be his good angel, and 
printed "Ben Hur." Lafcadio Hearn translated 
Gautier's "Avatar," but could find no publisher. 
One night, in a fit of desperation, he threw the 
manuscript into the fire. Mistakes have been 
made and are still made on both sides of the At- 
lantic, but the American publisher is, in my opin- 
ion, much ahead of the craft on the other side of 
the sea. I do not undertake to say whether he has 
a brighter mind, but I know he has a larger cour- 
age. His commercialism may be as great as that 
of the English publisher, but his love of letters is 
more pronounced. Between him and the writers 
who trust their literary fortunes to his keeping 
there develops often a warm and sincere friend- 
ship. In America it not infrequently happens 
that the publisher is himself an author and for 
that reason understands sympathetically the writ- 
er's feeling, and appreciates his aim and purpose. 
Many are the authors who have greatly improved 
both the literary form and the market value of 
their books by following advice freely given them 
by their publishers. 

It is not generally known that Shelley always 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 123 

had to pay for the publishing of his poems. Rob- 
ert Browning published his early books at his own 
expense. Hans Christian Andersen paid in full 
for the printing of his exquisite "Fairy Tales" be- 
cause there was not a publisher in Copenhagen 
who dared to have anything to do with the work. 
It is said that publishers in the United States are 
not now so timid and are very much more discern- 
ing. Perhaps it is so, but we are not all of us so 
sure of it. As throwing light upon this subject 
a paragraph from the Dial (Chicago) for Decem- 
ber 16, 1906, certainly possesses an amusing in- 
terest : 

"The ready recognition of literary merit, and 
the eagerness of editors and publishers to welcome 
genius whencesoever it may hail, is a theory often 
urged, though naturally a little difficult of belief 
to those whose contributions are rejected. Some 
doubter of this class recently tried the experiment 
of copying, with changes of personal and place 
names, one of Mr. Kipling's most popular stories, 
and sent it out to ten leading magazines of this 
country, by all of which it was politely declined 
with no indication that the hoax was discovered. 
Finally the very publishers who had originally is- 
sued the story, after gravely weighing its merits 
for seven weeks, sent the practical joker a letter 
of acceptance and a check. Of course the check 
was returned and the manuscript recovered. One 
offered explanation of the ten rejections is that al- 
though the fraud was detected, the editors were 
too polite to mention so rude a thing." 

Ohnet's wife is not the only wife who has had 



124 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

the good fortune to rescue a husband's work from 
destruction. It is said that Kipling's "Reces- 
sional" was taken from the waste basket by Mrs. 
Kipling. Edward Rawnsley is credited with hav- 
ing saved Tennyson's beautiful lyric, "The 
Brook," from the flames. Poor Warburton had no 
friend at hand when his servant lighted the fire 
with his precious manuscripts of sixty-five un- 
printed plays of Massinger, Ford, Lekker, Rob- 
ert Green, Chapman, Tornure and Thomas Mid- 
dleton. Lady Burton did not follow in the steps 
of Ohnet's wife, but perhaps it is just as well she 
did what she did. She had a woman's distaste for 
the kind of literature her husband was constantly 
translating from Oriental sources ; and after Sir 
Richard F. Burton's death she committed to the 
flames the unpublished manuscript of his transla- 
tion of "The Scented Garden" (the full title in 
English is "The Scented Garden for the Soul's 
Recreation"), an Arabic "Art of Love." She 
was for some time undecided as to what was her 
duty in the matter of the manuscript which, with 
all her husband's papers, came into her possession 
with his death. During the period of indecision 
she received an offer of six thousand guineas for 
the work. The man who made the offer said, "I 
know of from fifteen hundred to two thousand 
men who will buy the book at four guineas, that 
is, at two guineas the volume, and as I shall not 
restrict myself as to numbers, but supply all ap- 
plicants on payment, I shall probably make 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 125 

twenty thousand pounds out of the transaction." 
Lady Burton replied : "Out of the fifteen hundred 
men who will probably read the book, not more 
than fifteen will regard it in the spirit of science. 
The remaining fourteen hundred and eighty-five 
will devour the book for its filth, and they will also 
pass it to their friends, who will be injured by the 
publication." She received all kinds of advice and 
many tempting offers. Alone with her own heart 
in the silence of her chamber, she sought help from 
above. She tells us she knew that "what a gen- 
tleman, a scholar, a man of the world may write 
when living, he might view differently when, a 
poor, naked soul, he stands before a pure God, 
with all his deeds to answer for, and their conse- 
quences to face and endure." Again she tells 
us: 

"My heart said, 'you can have six thousand 
guineas; your husband worked for you, kept you 
in a happy home with honor and respect for thirty 
years. How are you going to reward him? That 
your wretched body may be fed, and clothed, and 
warmed for a few miserable months or years, will 
you let that soul, which is part of your soul, be left 
out in cold and darkness till the end of time, till 
all those sins which may have been committed on 
account of reading those writings have been expi- 
ated, or passed away forever? Why, it would be 
just parallel with the original thirty pieces of 
silver ?' 

I fetched the manuscript and laid it on the 
ground before me — two large volumes' worth. Still 
my thoughts were, 'would it be a sacrilege?' It 



126 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

was his magnum opus — his last work, that he was 
so proud of, that was to have been finished on the 
awful morrow — that never came. Will he rise up 
in his grave and curse me or bless me? The ques- 
tion will haunt me to death, but Sadi and El 
Shaykh el Nafzawi, who were pagans, begged par- 
don of God and prayed not to be cast into hell fire 
for having written the work, and implored their 
friends to pray for them to the Lord, that he would 
have mercy on them." 

The author made this book for scholars only, 
and when, later, he saw the common people read- 
ing it, he became alarmed, and, lest the book 
should do harm, he added these lines : 

"O you who read this, and think of the author 
And do not exempt him from blame, 
If you spare your good opinion of him, do not 
At least fail to say 'Lord, forgive us and him/ " 

She continues: 

"And then I said : 'Not only not for six thousand 
guineas, but not for six million guineas will I risk 
it.' Sorrowfully, reverently, and in fear and 
trembling, I burned sheet after sheet until the 
whole of the volume was consumed. 

It is my belief that by that act, if my husband's 
soul were weighted down, the cords were cut, and 
it was left to soar to its native heaven. As we had 
received no money in advance I was mistress of 
the situation. If any judge otherwise and deem 
me unworthy of their friendship, I must bear it in 
silence." 

Think of the thousands of books that have dis- 
appeared, and among them several referred to in 



AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 127 

our Sacred Scriptures. Where are the sixty-six 
lost plays of iEschylus? What would not the 
world give for the plays of Euripides that have 
vanished? The few plays that remain make fear- 
fully apparent the damage literature has sus- 
tained by their destruction. We have but little of 
Sophocles. Of Sappho we have only a few frag- 
ments. It may be that somewhere in Egyptian 
tombs or in the buried city of Herculaneum 
manuscripts of priceless value are awaiting the 
pick and the spade of the archaeologist. Let us 
hope it may be so* 



VI 
ETHAN BRAND 



"Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus 
est animus in custodia corporis ; nee injussu ejus, a 
quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita migrandum 
est, ne munus humanum assignatum a Deo defugisse 
videamini. ,, — Cicero* 

"But is there yet no other way, besides 
These painful passages ; how we may come 
To death, and mix with out connatural dust?" 

—Milton. 



ETHAN BRAND 

"I remember, I remember 
The fir trees dark and high; 
I used to think their slender tops 
Were close against the sky; 
It was a childish ignorance, 
But now 'tis little joy- 
To know I'm further off from heaven 
Than when I was a boy." 

DEAR old Tom Hood was never so far off 
from heaven as sometimes he imagined 
himself to be ; and when, the evening lamp being 
lighted and the curtains drawn, I forgot the 
rude world as I laugh over his whimsicalities and 
sigh over the tender pathos of his serious poems, 
it seems to me the sharing of his gentle compan- 
ionship in those merry English days that can 
never more return must have been something not 
far removed from heaven. Rossetti won from me 
something of love and no little silent but true 
discipleship when he pronounced the poet of 
"Nellie Gray" and "The Bridge of Sighs" the 
first English poet between Shelley and Tenny- 
son. I too remember childish ignorance, and, 
preacher though I have been these thirty years, 
I sometimes think I was never so far off from 
heaven as I am in these times of perplexed ex- 
perience and scholastic doubt. Are we really so 
much nearer all that is good and beautiful in 

131 



132 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

early days of careless fun and frolic? I know 
not. Perhaps we are always nearer heaven than 
we are wont to believe. I too have dreams and 
visions; what would life be without the wonder- 
world of imagination? Well do I remember a 
certain hamlet on the shore of the beautiful Hud- 
son, where that river spreads itself out into the 
wide expanse of Tappan Bay. Half a century 
ago it was a lovely cluster of houses embowered 
in green, but now it is something hard to de- 
scribe^ — neither village nor city, but a dusty and 
noisy town, ineffectually struggling toward 
municipal life and importance. It was there 
that for many years my father served as village 
pastor. The old church building is gone and 
now a smart new structure stands where rose 
gray, dingy walls that echoed the sound of inar- 
tistic praise in days when paid choirs were "a 
wicked city frivolity." I did not understand the 
sermons, and it is more than likely that they 
were not written with any thought of the chil- 
dren, who were supposed to be sufficiently in- 
structed in the Sunday School. I remember the 
long winter nights. They were filled with curi- 
ous tales of genii, fairies, and every kind of 
wood-sprite, goblin, and gnome. Many were the 
phantoms that lived in the dark and shadowy 
woods that crowned the precipitous cliffs called 
in those days "Hook Mountain." They are dead 
now, those astonishing creatures that made the 
world romantic and attractive to a child's fancy. 



ETHAN BRAND 133 

Life is a series of disillusionments. First, the 
fairies die, then the wiser theories of early years, 
later the plans of a mature judgment, and last 
of all the radiant hopes and, sometimes, the good 
resolves of those weary days in which we so com- 
monly make a virtue of our unlovely necessities. 
But memory lives on with a sweet and gentle per- 
sistence. Out of the wreck of life she saves the 
most beautiful things, and youth fares best of 
all at her hands. 

Beneath the spreading boughs of a certain 
maple tree in my father's garden there lived a 
little winged creature capable of changing itself 
at will into man or beast. My sister had seen a 
headless ghost, near the shelter of a tall tree, 
seated in the full splendor of the moon on a 
cloudless night. Strange lights danced upon the 
lawn at eventide, and startling sounds issued at 
times from the mysterious, dark recesses of the 
old garret. And all these marvelous phenomena 
of the haunted world wherein I lived and moved 
and had my being were explained in a most satis- 
factory way by a school-mate learned in such 
matters and wise above his years in the folk-lore 
of childhood. He knew of a most bloody murder 
that had been committed long, long years ago just 
where grew a scraggy lilac-bush in front of the 
parlor window. There had been a more recent, 
though less sanguinary, deed of violence in the 
room over the parlor, for there I had surrepti- 
tiously slashed my sister's doll and let out the 



134 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

vital current of its sawdust. Long and bitter 
was the mourning for little wax-headed Jane with 
eyes of heavenly blue and golden ringlets of the 
finest jute, wonderful and fair to behold. Now 
that I am "further off from heaven than when I 
was a boy," it seems to me I must have had a pe- 
culiarly angelic disposition for so young a child, 
as was evidenced by the speed with which I mem- 
orized that most innutritious of literary docu- 
ments known as "The Westminster Catechism" 
and fairly shouted, "Man's chief end is to glorify 
God and enjoy Him forever!" under the resist- 
less stimulus of a candy cane that danced before 
my vision as the fascinating reward of being able 
to repeat without mistake of any kind three pages 
of the "sacred manual." With all my celestial 
sweetness of disposition I failed to repent, I 
grieve to say, of that brutal assault upon little 
Jane's precious sawdust until a counter and pa- 
rental assault had been made upon my sensitive 
integument. 

Under such favorable circumstances and with 
such helpful environment I came to know, as I 
grew a little older, something about Hoffman's 
"Wierd Tales," Poe's "Black Cat," Dr. War- 
ren's "Diary of a Late Physician," and Haw- 
thorne's "Ethan Brand." These specimens of 
wild and mysterious literature, though somewhat 
hearselike, gave me no discomfort. Youth de- 
lights in tragedy. It is only when later years 
have made one personally acquainted with real 



ETHAN BRAND 135 

tragedy that there is developed a more wholesome 
preference for comedy. 

The tale of "Ethan Brand" was a special de- 
light, and even after I had arrived at man's estate 
I continued to regard it as unique. That was 
because I knew so little about books and believed 
many things original that later I knew were 
borrowed, stolen, or begged from whatever treas- 
ury of literary resources happened to be nearest 
at hand. Not much in this world is original. 
Shakspeare pillaged North's "Plutarch" to make 
his "Anthony and Cleopatra," and it is said that 
even Homer dined on smaller fish. How surely 
and swiftly the illusions of life dissolve and dis- 
appear. The romance of this world is smitten 
with a fatal malady, and our children's children 
will, no doubt, be present at the funeral. How 
many beautiful things and gracious arts are with 
us no more. Letter- writing expired when men 
came to put their trust in the telegraph and tele- 
phone. Conversation has gone the way of all the 
living. In the near future some enterprising 
Traction Company will cross the lagoon, and the 
graceful gondola will be seen no more on the 
winding canals of Venice. Soon the department- 
shops of Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Mecca will 
rival those of New York, Philadelphia, and Chi- 
cago. Under the disenchantment of the winged 
years I also came at last to see that "there is 
nothing new under the sun" and that the man 
who went in search of the unpardonable sin had 



136 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

his double in real life and in the literature of 
many lands as well. Thousands of distressed and 
distracted men and women in all countries, but 
especially in orthodox Scotland and in the New 
England of a hundred years ago, have been 
crushed to earth by the grim and relentless belief 
that they had themselves made the same fatal dis- 
covery that compassed the ruin of Ethan Brand. 
The goblins of our youth are with us still. They 
change their names, and their pranks are differ- 
ent, but age only increases their power. They 
still terrify imagination and hurt the sensitive 
conscience. Superstition wears a charmed life. 
We die, but the ghosts live on. When they are 
no longer able to plague us, they plague our 
children and our grandchildren. Over and over 
again the wierd story of Francis Spira, the apos- 
tate, has been repeated with extra touches of hor- 
ror by casuists of nearly every shade of religious 
belief and by writers upon theological and eccle- 
siastical themes in papers and books without end. 
The life and last hours of the once notorious 
William Pope have been almost as fruitful of psy- 
chological mysteries and spiritual terrors. And 
there is the death of Voltaire. What a discus- 
sion, unseemly in every way, has concerned itself 
with that man's last hours ! Is it aught to you 
or to me, good reader, how the gentleman of 
"sardonic grin and infernal smirk" went out from 
this life so fragile and brief? Long ago he left 
us, and to make a clean job of the unsavory 



ETHAN BRAND 137 

affair a mob of such men and women as only 
Paris can engender pulled him out of his tomb 
and we have not even his bones, which a certain 
French writer said were the most conspicuous 
thing about him in his later years. But we have 
his books and, with all their faults, who would 
wish them destroyed? Their loss would impov- 
erish the literature not of France alone, but of 
the entire world. And Thomas Paine (good peo- 
ple still call him "Tom" Paine) is another bogy 
that has been rubbed threadbare by the religious 
acerbity of believers and unbelievers. It is more 
than likely the attrition will continue. Let me 
not sit in judgment upon his character, nor in 
this paper or elsewhere pronounce upon the des- 
tiny of his soul. It is to be hoped that his im- 
mortal part fared better than his bones, which in 
1836 were offered for sale with the effects of 
Mr. Corbett in a London auction room. Mr. (he 
used to be called "Rev.") Moncure D. Conway, 
who loves the memory of the author of "The Age 
of Reason," is possessed of a bit of Paine's brain 
which was removed and preserved by Mr. Ben- 
jamin Tilley. Conway paid twenty-five dollars 
for the little convolution of gray matter. 
Brains are cheap at that rate, but Conway did 
not need another man's cerebral tissue; he had 
enough of his own, and some to spare. 

What interests me just at present is not the 
mental condition nor yet the moral status of 
Ethan Brand, but the peculiar method of self- 



138 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

destruction which Hawthorne selected as suited to 
the character of a man who went in search of the 
unpardonable sin and found that it was a sin of 
which he had himself been guilty. Ethan Brand 
ended his life by leaping into a burning lime-kiln. 

"Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms 
on high. The blue flames played upon his face, 
and imparted the wild and ghastly light which 
alone could have suited his expression; it was that 
of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of 
intensest torment. 

f O Mother Earth/ he cried, who art no more 
my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall 
never be resolved! O Mankind, whose brotherhood 
I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart be- 
neath my feet! O stars of heaven, that shone on 
me of old, as if to light me onward and upward! — 
farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of 
Fire, — henceforth my familiar friend! Embrace 
me, as I do thee!' 

In the morning when the lime-burner looked 
into the kiln the marble was all burnt into perfect 
snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst 
of the circle, — snow-white too, and thoroughly 
converted into lime, — lay a human skeleton, in the 
attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down 
to long repose. Within the ribs — strange to say 
— was the shape of a human heart. 

'Was the fellow's heart made of marble?' cried 
Bartram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. 
'At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special 
good lime, and taking all the bones together, my 
kiln is half a bushel the richer for him.' 

So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, 
and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of 
Ethan Brand were crumpled into fragments." 



ETHAN BRAND 139 

A gentleman who has given much time to the 
study of exceptional and out-of-the-way occur- 
rences assured me that the dreadful method of 
suicide adopted by Ethan Brand was wholly 
original with the gentle and melancholy New 
England novelist. "Hawthorne," he said, "con- 
structed the tale after he had decided upon the 
way in which its hero was to be disposed of; the 
story was made to fit the denouement.'''' I must 
think otherwise. The death of Empedocles, who 
threw himself into the crater of Mount iEtna, 
might easily have suggested to Hawthorne's 
classically educated mind that fearful leap into 
the burning lime-kiln; and the philosopher's 
sandal thrown up from the volcano some time 
afterward might have given the author of 
"Ethan Brand" his first hint of the snow-white 
skeleton that made the lime-kiln half a bushel 
richer. Even the death of Marcus Curtius, who, 
to secure the safety of the Roman Republic, 
mounted his horse and rode full-armed into a gulf 
that immediately closed over him, might have 
awakened in Hawthorne's mind the first thought 
of that dreadful plunge which gives to the story 
of "Ethan Brand" its peculiar horror. 

It is by no means certain that the method of 
self-destruction made use of in the tale under 
review was without parallel in the common life of 
our American people when Hawthorne first pub- 
lished the story of "Ethan Brand." Instances of 
the same kind of suicide in later years are on 



140 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

record; and when I take into account the illit- 
eracy of the men who thus disposed of them- 
selves, I find it impossible to believe that they 
were in any wise influenced in the selection of the 
peculiar kind of coup-de-grace by the story of 
the man who leaped into a burning lime-kiln. In 
1883 a tramp who gave his name as Bell and his 
home as Jamestown in Pennsylvania stood for 
some time by a furnace in the Fay Williams 
Company Glass Works at Kent, Ohio. He 
smoked a pipe while the workmen were preparing 
to throw sand into the furnace, which was heated 
to its greatest intensity. The foreman ordered 
him to step aside. "Why should I move out of 
your way?" enquired the tramp. "Because I 
want to get at the fire," was the answer. "So do 
I," said the tramp, and with that he cast aside 
his pipe and jumped through the open door into 
the blazing mass of coal and gas. In 1901 an- 
other man leaped into a blast furnace at the 
Shoenberger plant of the American Steel and 
Wire Company at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He 
mounted the cage thirty feet above the ground 
and waited for a man named Martin Lee, who was 
in charge of the top filler, to open the mouth of 
the furnace. The moment the mouth was open 
and the flames shot skyward, the stranger 
leaped to his death. In 1895 a remarkable fun- 
eral took place at the Midvale Steel Works, 
where an immense ingot of steel was buried with 
the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. The 



ETHAN BRAND 141 

ingot contained the bodies of John Farkin and 
Joseph Gazda, who were engulfed in 82,000 
pounds of molten steel which proceeded from a 
leaky furnace and fell into a pit in which the 
men were at the time working. In one second 
not a vestige of the two men remained, and 
scarcely a puff arose to indicate the complete in- 
cineration. 

Ethan Brand's death, horrible and striking as 
it certainly was, cannot be called, in view of what 
has been said, unique. New methods of self- 
destruction are hard to find in an age so fertile 
of resources. Yet perhaps the following excerpt 
from a Medical Journal gives what is at present, 
and will long remain, an entirely unique method 
of suicide: 

"A nurse at one of the Paris hospitals not long 
since tried a new way of committing suicide — 
namely, by swallowing two tubes of Eberth's pure 
culture of the typhoid bacillus. On the following 
day and the day after that she felt no inconveni- 
ence. On the third day she had some headache 
but no fever. On the sixth day she felt heavy and 
stupid and experienced great weakness in her legs, 
being obliged to take to her bed. On the seventh 
day her temperature was, in the morning, 37-6° C. 
and in the evening 38.6°C. On the eighth day she 
had two attacks of epistaxis and her temperature in 
the evening was 40.2°C. Several rose spots were 
also visible. On the tenth day serum reaction was 
positive. Otherwise the typhoid fever followed 
its normal course, but it was a very severe attack 
and the patient had in all 176 baths. The remark- 
able points of this case are the very short duration 



142 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

of the period of incubation, — namely, only two 
days — and the rapid appearance of the rose spots, 
eight days after infection. M. Duflocq and Voisin, 
who reported the case, explained the very short 
duration of the incubation period by the large quan- 
tity of bacilli which were introduced into the di- 
gestive tract." 

In "The Dream of Love" by Henry Abbey 
we have a poem in which the deadly power of the 
cholera spirillum is made use of in the creation of 
artistic effect. The "heavy villain" of the poem 
endeavors to commit a diabolical murder by in- 
troducing into a living human body loathsome 
bacteria. The germs are described as they ap- 
pear under the lens of a microscope. 

Even the speech of Ethan Brand which, ac- 
cording to Hawthorne, was delivered by the 
wretched man while he stood upon the edge of the 
lime-kiln just before his fatal leap, is paralleled 
in Matthew Arnold's fine poem, "Empedocles on 
iEtna." These are the words, so we are told, 
that the old-time philosopher uttered when he 
plunged into the crater: 

"Is it for a moment? 
— Ah, boil up, ye vapors! 
Leap and roar, thou sea of fire! 
My soul glows to meet you. 
Ere it flag, ere the mists 
Of despondency and gloom 
Rush over it again, 
Receive me, save me!" 

When one considers the many painless methods 



ETHAN BRAND 143 

of self-destruction known to men of even mod- 
erate education, it is surprising that any one pos- 
sessed of a sane mind should ever resort to any 
of those dreadful and violent assaults upon life 
which seem to fascinate certain of our race. Why 
do the Japanese disembowel themselves, living, as 
they do, so near the great fields of opium-pop- 
pies? Why should anyone drink that liquid fire 
we call carbolic acid when one can as easily pur- 
chase a few ounces of benumbing chloroform? It 
is one of the mysteries of perverted human na- 
ture. 

Perhaps the most fantastic attempt at suicide 
on record is the one related by Fodere of an 
Englishman who advertised that on a certain day 
he would destroy himself in Covent Garden "for 
the benefit of his wife and family. Tickets of 
admission, a guinea each." He deserves a place 
in the same paragraph with the man who hung 
himself to the clapper of the bell of the church 
at Fressonville, in Picardy, and by swaying to 
and fro caused the bell to sound in a most extra- 
ordinary manner. Of course the sound gave the 
alarm and he was cut down before life was ex- 
tinct. 

The laughter of Ethan Brand heightens the 
gruesome and uncanny effect of the tale and im- 
parts to it a subtile and penetrating supernatu- 
ralism which increases as the narrative nears the 
final catastrophe. Bartram's child, more sensi- 
tive than the coarse and rude lime-burner, whis- 



144 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

pers : "He does not laugh like a man that is glad. 
So the noise frightens me!" Little Joe uncon- 
sciously singles out in that brief sentence the ele- 
ment of tragedy which distinguishes the laughter 
of Ethan Brand from that of the vulgar crowd 
at the village inn. Lawyer Giles and his com- 
panion, the tipsy doctor, are pitiable specimens 
of our race, but their noisy merriment has in it 
nothing beyond the merely human note. The 
laughter of Ethan Brand is not coarse like that 
of the two men named. It is the laughter of a 
nature that has in some measure refined itself by 
the moral and intellectual acuteness involved in 
and developed by the dreadful quest. It is 
purely a thing of the understanding and has 
nothing to do with the heart. Greek drama- 
tists as well as writers of today agree in as- 
cribing to joyless laughter an element of 
tragedy. Victor Hugo tells us in "Les Miser- 
ables" that Jean Valjean, when he had decided 
to conceal his identity at cost of a compara- 
tively innocent man, heard an "internal burst of 
laughter." It was not the laughter of gladness, 
but of a fiend within the bosom that had, by an 
evil resolve, given it fatal admittance. Those 
who have been much with the insane, especially 
with such insane persons as imagine that they 
have committed great crimes, know something of 
the penetrating fear and awful sense of calamity 
that in their disordered laughter usurp the place 
of human gladness. The vacant and joyless 



ETHAN BRAND 145 

laughter of a maniac, though not to be con- 
founded with the derisive laughter of Ethan 
Brand, is a thing from which the sane and nor- 
mal mind shrinks. 

The ethics of suicide are not necessarily in- 
volved in the story under review. We do not 
have to answer now the question: "Is suicide in 
and of itself an evil in such a way and to such 
an extent that it becomes a duty under all cir- 
cumstances to condemn it without qualification?" 
That question might be answered one way or the 
other without affecting in any way either the 
character or the interest of Hawthorne's narra- 
tive. Still no thoughtful man, especially if he 
be of an introspective turn of mind, can read the 
story of that fearful leap into the burning lime- 
kiln without catching sight of the not-far-distant 
ethical problem that, though not directly in- 
volved in the story, is still suggested by it. 
Themistocles poisoned himself in order to avoid 
leading the Persians against his countrymen. 
The Emperor Otho killed himself to save his sol- 
diers. Every college boy knows what was the 
choice of the noble virgins of Macedon when dis- 
honor stared them in the face. The story of Ar- 
nold von Winkleried, the Swiss patriot, who 
broke the Austrian phalanx at the battle of 
Sempach in 1385 by rushing against the points 
of their spears and gathering within his arms as 
many as he could clasp, commands the unquali- 
fied admiration of all good men and women. He 



146 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

fell pierced with many wounds, but the Swiss 
were victorious. His act was deliberate ; that is 
to say, it was one of choice and not of neces- 
sity. It was not the execution of a military order 
he was compelled as a soldier to obey. Neither 
was it the undertaking of a desperate enterprise 
that furnished him a single chance of escape. 
Death was certain. He intentionally impaled 
himself upon the Austrian spears for the accom- 
plishment of an end that seemed to him so im- 
portant as to warrant the sacrifice. He made a 
breach in the Austrian ranks through which his 
comrades, passing over his dead body, forced their 
way to the very heart of the resisting forces and 
carried the day. His last words are thus re- 
ported: "Friends, I am going to lay down my 
life to procure you victory. All I request is that 
you provide for my family. Follow me and imi- 
tate my example." It matters little from an ethi- 
cal point of view whether he himself or the 
Austrian soldiers gave the deadly thrust. Either 
way the deed was his own. 

To come down to modern times, let me call at- 
tention to a provision which, we are told, all offi- 
cers engaged in fighting Indians make for 
escaping the dreadful consequences of capture by 
blood-thirsty savages. An officer with whom I 
was well acquainted assured me that he always 
carried poison with him when he went on an ex- 
pedition against hostile tribes. He endeavored to 
select a poison swift and painless in its action, 



ETHAN BRAND 147 

but he accounted death by any drug better than 
the fate awaiting him in the event of capture. 
He once went into a skirmish with aconite and 
prussic acid hidden in his clothing in quantities 
sufficient to destroy not only his own life, but the 
lives of a considerable number of his men. 

Colonel Inman some time ago published in 
Topeka, Kansas, a collection of short stories 
which he called "Tales of the Trail." In that 
book he expressed it as his opinion that General 
Custer committed suicide at the last moment, 
when he found himself face to face with the hor- 
rors of capture. 

"With the Indians there appears to be some close 
affiliation between the departed spirit and the hair. 
I have questioned many a blood-begrimed warrior 
why he should want a dead man's hair, and invari- 
ably there have been assigned a number of reasons, 
three of which are most prominent: First, it is an 
evidence to his people that he has triumphed over 
an enemy; second, the scalps are employed very 
prominently in the incantations of the 'medicine 
lodge' — a part of their religious rites; third, the 
savage believes there is a wonderful power inherent 
in the scalp of an enemy. All the excellent quali- 
ties of the victim go with his hair the moment it is 
wrenched from his head. If it be that of a re- 
nowned warrior, so much the more is the savage 
anxious to procure the scalp, for the fortunate pos- 
sessor then inherits all the bravery and prowess of 
its original owner. 

He who kills himself in battle, accidentally or 
purposely, has positively no hereafter; he is irre- 



148 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

vocably lost. Those who are struck by lightning 
or die by any other apparently direct operation of 
the Manitou (the Great Spirit) are hurriedly 
buried where they fall, without any ceremony, and 
no mound or other mark is erected over them. If 
after a battle there are found corpses not scalped 
or mutilated, it is certain that those persons came 
to death by their own hand, for it is part of the re- 
ligion of an Indian not to scalp or mutilate the 
body of an enemy who has committed suicide. His 
superstition in regard to persons dying by suicide 
or by lightning is as religiously cherished as any 
of his other myths." 

General Custer was found unscalped and with- 
out mutilation. This Inman regards as substan- 
tial proof of suicide. Custer was known among 
all the Indian tribes as not only a brave man, but 
an officer of distinction, and no doubt the sav- 
ages were eager to obtain his scalp with its sup- 
posed communicable virtue. Great must have 
been their disappointment when they found that 
Custer had escaped their cruelty and had de- 
prived his scalp of all that made it worth possess- 
ing. 

No sharp and ironclad rule can be adopted. 
Under ordinary circumstances suicide is of the 
nature of murder, and yet circumstances may 
arise which call for the voluntary surrender of 
life. A man may be required to give his life for 
the preservation of another. A disabled ship 
was about to sink. There were not enough boats 
to save the entire crew. The sailors drew for 
places in the life-boats. One sailor who had 



ETHAN BRAND 149 

drawn a place gave it to his mess-mate saying: 
"You have a wife and little children at home and 
I have no one dependent upon me. Take my 
place ; it is hetter that I should die than that you 
should have to leave a family without support." 
That man might have saved himself. He was en- 
titled to the place which he surrendered. In a 
certain way he may be said to have taken his own 
life, but it was at the call, I will not say of duty, 
but of a rare opportunity. 

It seems to me that we may sometimes make 
choice of the kind of death we must undergo. 
General Custer thought so when he made sure 
that the Indians should find his dead body on the 
field of battle. In certain parts of the world a 
man under sentence of death is allowed to choose 
one of three methods of execution. He may elect 
to be hanged, to be beheaded, or to be shot. 
Most persons would much prefer the last and 
would certainly make that choice. Yet there have 
been conscientious men who have declined to ex- 
press a preference on the ground that such ex- 
pression might make them in some measure re- 
sponsible for their own death. 

After all has been said that can be said by such 
ancient writers as Lucan, Epictetus, and Pliny, 
and by such modern authors as Hume, Donne, 
Voltaire, and Newman, it still remains true that 
self-destruction is, under ordinary circumstances, 
wrong in every sense of the word. The question 
of suicide is one not to be settled by either the 



150 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

opinions of Cato or the peculiar circumstances 
that surrounded Philip Strozzi, but by the en- 
lightened moral sense of good men under the in- 
fluence of Christian civilization. Not all the 
ancients agreed with Cato of Utica. Darius is 
represented as saying in his darkest moment: ''I 
will wait the issue of my fate. You wonder that 
I do not terminate my life, but I choose rather to 
die by another's crime than by my own." Ac- 
cording to Euripides, Hercules said : "I have con- 
sidered, and though oppressed with misfortunes, 
I have determined thus: Let no one depart out 
of life through fear of what may happen to him ; 
for he who is not able to resist evils will fly like 
a coward from the darts of the enemy." The 
laws of Thebes deprived the suicide of funeral 
rites and branded his name and memory with in- 
famy. Equally severe was the Athenian law. 
But for those who live under the brighter light 
and larger privilege of modern civilization and 
Christian education better arguments are at hand. 
Life has been given to us that we may cherish 
and use it in accordance with the will of Heaven 
for our own good and for the benefit of others. 
Every man's life belongs not to himself alone, 
but to his friends and to all the world. Even the 
poorest life may serve some good end. We can- 
not say that self-destruction is at all times and 
under all circumstances evil, for instances have 
been cited which prove the contrary, but as 
ordinarily understood and as generally practiced 



ETHAN BRAND 151 

by those who resort to it from cowardly and un- 
worthy motives it is certainly the sin against 
God and the crime against humanity which the 
entire modern world accounts it to be. The fa- 
miliar lines of Milton cover, for the most part, 
man's duty in this matter: 

"Nor love thy life, nor hate: but while thou liv'st 
Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven." 



VII 
THE MAN OF GENIUS 



"Sed nimirum quae sunt in manu hominum, ea et 
mihi et multis contigerunt: illud vero ut adipisci 
arduum, sic etiam sperare nimium est, quod dari 
non nisi a diis potest." 

— Plinius Minor. 

c The world's wealth is its original men, and it can 
in no wise forget them; not till after a long while; 
sometimes not till after thousands of years. For- 
getting them, what, indeed, should it remember? 
The world's wealth is its original men ; by these and 
their works it is a world and not a waste." 

— Carlyle. 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 

PROFESSOR Cesare Lombroso's book, "The 
Man of Genius," is a work the publication 
of which good men have reason to regret and to 
the title-page of which Charles Scribner's Sons 
should have refused their imprint. The blas- 
phemous chapters that represent our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ as an insane man of genius 
and the conversion of St. Paul as the result of 
an epileptic seizure are painful and unprofitable 
reading. But putting aside the gross impiety of 
the book, we still find in what remains little to 
praise and much to censure. The man who, pre- 
tending to voice the latest results of that de- 
partment of medical science which deals with 
diseases of the human brain and disorders of the 
mind, gives it as his opinion that the greatest 
men and women of all lands and ages were in- 
sane and that genius itself is a neurosis of an 
epileptoid nature, is scarcely to be taken seri- 
ously or to be regarded with any great consid- 
eration. Our only reason for calling attention 
to "The Man of Genius" is to be found in the 
sad fact that many untrained minds, without 
realizing the nature of the book, absorb its 
poison and are deluded by its foolish pretensions. 
The work is printed in "The Contemporary 
Science Series," but its claims to scientific stand- 
ing are slight. It is in every sense a popular 
155 



156 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

book, addressed to educated men and women in 
all departments of industry and in all circles of 
society. Dr. Havelock Ellis, who edits "The 
Contemporary Science Series" in which Lom- 
broso's book appears, is a man of great learning 
in the not always fragrant departments of sci- 
ence which he delights to investigate. His books 
on "Sexual Inversion," "Modesty, Sexual Peri- 
odicity, and Auto-erotism," and "The Analysis 
of the Sexual Impulse in Women" are as wonder- 
fully suggestive as they are in places surprisingly 
indelicate. They are the work of an original in- 
vestigator who knows the way over which he 
travels, but who has himself not much use for the 
"modesty" which he has subjected to the most ex- 
acting scientific analysis. That he is willing to 
appear as the editor of Lombroso's book is due 
not so much to any great importance which he at- 
taches to the work as to the fact that his attitude 
and that of Lombroso toward the religious world, 
and in some measure toward the social world as 
well, are closely related. 

Lombroso believes that genius is a neurosis. 
The underlying foundation of the world's best 
literature and finest art is Bedlam. Behind the 
thrilling deeds of heroism that make history the 
glorious thing it is, one may discover, if he will, 
the disordered visage of Topsy-Turvy. Max 
Nordau, whose book called "Degeneration" made 
him famous with unscientific readers, agrees with 
Lombroso in defining genius as a morbid affection 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 157 

of the nervous system. But he still thinks there 
may be cases in which genius is not morbid. He 
tells us that "science does not assert that every 
genius is a lunatic; there are some geniuses of 
superabundant power whose high privilege con- 
sists in the possession of one or another extraor- 
dinarily developed faculty, without the rest of 
their faculties falling short of the average 
standard." 

Nordau thinks Goethe was sane, and he tells 
us that the poet, had he "never written a line of 
verse, would all the same have remained a man of 
the world, of good principles, a fine art connois- 
seur, a judicious collector, a keen observer of na- 
ture." Lombroso is more sweeping and unspar- 
ing. He assures us that many of Goethe's poems 
were composed in a somnabulistic state, and that 
the poet was subject to hallucinations of a start- 
ling and confusing nature. No man of genius 
slips through Lombroso's fingers. Tagged and 
labelled, from Socrates dancing and jumping 
in the street without reason, to Comte who 
thought himself the "High Priest of Humanity," 
the race of man adorns his cabinet of psycholog- 
ical specimens. lepidum caput, remains there 
not for you also, Cesare Lombroso, some gilded 
peg upon which you may hang your own rare au- 
dacity, and so make at last in your wonderful 
museum the shining cluster complete? 

Here are some of Lombroso's mad men: Plato, 
Socrates, Julius Caesar, Nero, Septimus Severus, 



158 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Mahomet, Martin Luther, Columbus, Dante, 
Oliver Cromwell, Giordano Bruno, George Fox, 
Bunyan, Richelieu, Peter the Great, Fred- 
erick the Great, Napoleon, Descartes, Carlo 
Dolce, Michael Angelo, Petrarch, Tasso, Moliere, 
Alfieri, Goethe, Schiller, Rossini, Rousseau, Shel- 
ley, Lord Byron, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Robert 
Burns, Coleridge, Pope, Victor Hugo, Charles 
Lamb, Tolstoi, Carlyle, Talma, Charles Darwin, 
Abraham Lincoln. 

These were all crazy! Heaven grant this one 
prayer, that we may all of us go stark mad, and 
join the hallowed fellowship of lunatics so di- 
vinely gifted. They were not wholly sans rime 
et sans raison, but upon the dazzling splendor of 
each and every one of them, the all-discerning eye 
of Lombroso discovered the plague spot of de- 
generacy, and restrained by no foolish sense of 
delicacy, his unerring and remorseless finger is 
placed upon the fell contagion. George Sand is 
not of this illustrious companionship. Alas, she 
was sane ! We have it from Lombroso himself 
that she was "free from all neurosis," which is 
the same as saying that she was not a woman of 
genius. To be sure, she had her seasons of mel- 
ancholy, and mental depression was the sign of 
degeneration in Abraham Lincoln; but she at- 
tributed her thoughtful and pensive spirit to bile. 
Poor Lincoln was so far gone that he did not 
know what was the matter with his hepatiogastric 
contrivance. It was the French novelist's "bile** 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 159 

that caught Lombroso's eye. That the gifted 
authoress neither romanced nor sentimentalized 
about her depression of spirits, but seized upon 
a commonplace and vulgar explanation and was 
satisfied therewith, was a sure sign of mental 
health and vigor. The trite, the hackneyed, the 
ordinary, the vulgar, the inferior — these are the 
elements of a sound and well-balanced mind. 

Just here a word with regard to pessimism 
may be injected without injury to the continuity 
of our paper. Is the inscription on the old sun- 
dial on the Rhine the true motto of a strong and 
far-seeing life? "I note none but the cloudless 
hours," is what the dial said. What kind of a 
man would he be who could take note of only the 
cloudless hours ? Day and night have equal places 
in the economy of nature. There is a dark side 
to our world. Tooth and claw are as real as are 
flowers and fruit. The Latin "Memento mori" is 
as wise a bit of counsel as is the more agreeable 
"Gederike zu Leben" of the Germans. Sorrow and 
calamity are in our world, and we cannot escape 
them by declining to see them. But if we will 
recognize their presence and square our living to 
their demands, we may put them to noble use in 
the development of character and in the shaping 
of material circumstances. The loneliness of high 
thinking furnishes no good argument against 
effort to reach those altitudes upon which forever 
lies repose. Willful sadness may be wrong and 
Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on iEtna" may be 



160 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

decadent, but there is a sadness in no way will- 
ful, and that is so far from being wrong that 
it is the secret of much power. The litera- 
ture of power is seldom optimistic. Misery and 
anguish are the soil in which it finds root. Dark- 
ness and even sin minister to its life. Some of the 
greatest benefactors of mankind have been ac- 
counted pessimists. Dante and Michael Angelo 
lived somewhat in the shadow. Tolstoi and Car- 
lyle were never very light-hearted. Abraham 
Lincoln was a man of depressed spirit who car- 
ried in anguish and love upon his great heart the 
distress of a mighty nation. He was melancholy. 
In his nature were strangely mingled kindness 
and loneliness. His temper and disposition were 
such as to occasion in Lombroso very decided sus- 
picions with regard to his mental condition. 

Max Nordau goes farther, and finds the writ- 
ings of revolutionists attributable to degeneracy. 
He does not tell us what he thinks of the "Dec- 
laration of Independence" but we read between 
the lines, and since it was undeniably a revolu- 
tionary document, we credit him with discerning 
in it good evidence of the lunacy of Thomas 
Jefferson and the renowned but misguided men 
who joined him in signing it. Lincoln's "Address 
at Gettysburg" was due to hyperesthesia, but 
poor man! he had not the remotest suspicion of 
it. He thought that his address was due to 
patriotism, when, in fact, it was due to a certain 
"ofFness in the upper region" when neither Nor- 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 161 

dau nor Lombroso were at hand to set him right. 
There is a sense in which Lincoln was a pessimist. 
Certainly no one ever accused him of being an 
optimist. His wit and laughter-provoking sallies 
were not the natural offspring of a merry heart. 
Like Liston, Grimaldi and Carlini, he made others 
laugh while his own heart was breaking within 
him. But if ever there was in any heart a warm 
and tender love, in any bosom a noble purpose, in 
any life brave, wise and clear-sighted action, then 
Lincoln was of all men most sane. 

Schopenhauer may have thought this "the 
worst of all possible worlds" and that "sleep is 
better than waking, and death than sleep," but 
the German thinker is by no means the only in- 
terpreter of life's mystery and gloom. Nor are 
his coadjutors, Hartmann, Mainlander and 
Bohnsen, the only high priests of a cult not with- 
out its saints and martyrs. No man who is alive 
to the world as it is can remain uninfluenced by 
its sore distress. He may sing with the poet: 

"O threats of hell and hopes of paradise! 
One thing at least is certain — this life flies; 
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies; 
The flower that once has bloomed forever dies/' 

but he will not be found behind other men in his 
effort to render the life that flies as sweet and 
noble as may be for the flower that dies. The 
pessimist has his place among men, and his mis- 
sion to the age and to his race is by no means an 
unworthy one. In the gloom of his twilight 



162 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

things are visible that no man may see in the 
meridian splendor of a noon-day sun. In the 
shady grove, where his soul delights to dwell, are 
springs of strength and refreshment that are 
known to him alone. In periods of great politi- 
cal corruption, of dying faith, dissolving empires, 
revolutions, and catastrophes, he comes to the 
front, and is often the saviour of his country. 
Not in such periods do men turn to 

"Lighted halls 
Crammed full of fools and fiddles," 

but to those quiet and shadowy retreats where the 
pessimist may have for next-door neighbor De- 
spondency of Spirit, but where as well he holds 
high communion with nobler ideals than haunt 
the empty brains of the children of this world. 
Men like Lombroso may count all the sad-eyed 
prophets of the soul hopelessly mad, but the gen- 
erations of men rise up and call them blessed. 

According to Lombroso, genius inclines those 
who possses that dangerous gift to excessive in- 
dulgence in stimulants and narcotics. He tells 
us that "great writers who have been under the 
dominion of alcohol have a style peculiar to 
themselves." He knows just what that style is. 
It is characterized by deliberate eroticism, and 
"an inequality which is rather grotesque than 
beautiful." It unites the deepest melancholy with 
the most obscene gaiety. It is true that many 
great men and a few great women have been in- 



THE MAN OF GENIUS . 16S 

temperate. Robert Burns, Cooke the actor, 
Thomas Moore, George Moreland, O'Carolan the 
Irish bard, Edgar A. Poe and Hartley Coleridge 
did themselves great injury by their fondness for 
alcohol. Randolph, William Wilberforce, Dante^ 
Gabriel Rossetti, Alfred de Musset, Coleridge, 
Erskine the English advocate, Dr. Hall the dis- 
tinguished English clergyman, Kemble the tra- 
gedian, and Thomas De Quincey were addicted to 
the use of opium. Newton the great philosopher, 
Tennyson the poet, Thomas Carlyle, General 
Grant, Robert Louis Stevenson, President Mc- 
Kinley, and a countless host of the sons of 
genius found soothing and refreshment in to- 
bacco. Napoleon I. took snuff, as did also Pius 
IX. and Leo XIII. Henry Ward Beecher wanted 
strong coffee. Hoffman, the German author, 
mingled spirits and opium. Mrs. Jordan, the 
Irish actress, dissolved calves-foot jelly in sherry. 
Kean, the actor, wanted beef tea with cold brandy. 
Charles Lamb was not satisfied with brandy, but 
must have as well gin and tobacco. Schiller de- 
lighted in the smell of apples when the fruit 
could be obtained ; when he could not have apples 
he wanted large quantities of coffee or cham- 
pagne. Mrs. Siddons liked porter. Bishop 
Berkley drank large quantities of tea. Bayard 
Taylor had, wherever he went, his beer. 

It is freely admitted that many men and 
women of genius have used stimulants and nar- 
cotics — some of them have grossly abused intoxi- 



v 



164 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

cants. But even were it true that all men and 
women of genius were in the past and are now 
intemperate, still how small must be the number 
when compared with the countless multitudes of 
common-place and even uneducated persons who 
once were or now are intemperate. If the posses- 
sion of genius inclines a man to the indulgence 
of appetite, what shall be said of the greater peril 
to which the multitudes of our race who have no 
genius are exposed? Certainly the vast majority 
of hard drinkers, in whatever age, have been 
wholly innocent of anything even remotely re- 
sembling genius. We do not believe that a man 
of genius is any more likely to have delirium tre- 
mens than is his humdrum and common-place 
landlady. Milton was a great poet, but he never 
indulged, so far as we know, in anything more 
invigorating than light wine and tobacco. The 
American authors, Washington Irving, Longfel- 
low, Emerson and Whittier must have had some 
genius, but we never heard it whispered that they 
were intemperate. Henry D. Thoreau was a 
man of great genius, but he ate no flesh, drank 
no wine, and never used tobacco. Robert G. 
Ingersoll, Horace Greeley and William Cullen 
Bryant were men of genius, but who ever heard 
of their being intoxicated? Lombroso's shot fell 
wide of the mark when he associated genius with 
intemperance and labelled them both insanity. 

Vagabondage is another sign of genius, accord- 
ing to Lombroso. He mentions Heine, Alfieri, 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 165 

Byron, Burns, Leopardi, Tasso, Goldsmith, 
Sterne, Gautier, Musset, Lenau and Foscolo. All 
these immortal ones loved wandering and could 
not be persuaded to remain long in one place. 
Meyerbeer traveled for thirty years, composing 
the while his beautiful operas. Wagner jour- 
neyed on foot from Riga to Paris. Over against 
Lombroso's list let us name Goethe, Tennyson, 
Emerson, Thoreau and Whittier, Goethe wan- 
dered some in his youth, but during most of his 
life remained at home in Weimar. Tennyson 
lived quietly in England. Emerson went abroad 
twice, but was never a wanderer. Thoreau went 
into Canada for a brief season, but most of his 
life was spent in Concord. Whittier clung to 
his home and was averse to travel. These were 
all men of genius, but there was in their nature 
nothing of the vagabond. The life of Thoreau 
was marked by certain eccentricities, but the im- 
pulse to rove was not among them. The fields 
and forests of New England were quite to his 
mind, and it is doubtful if he ever entertained 
the thought of visiting remote lands, or even re- 
mote parts of his own country. 

Sterility is pointed out by our author as an- 
other mark of genius. Many distinguished men 
remain bachelors, and among those who marry, 
the majority have no children. The words of 
Bacon are cited, "The noblest works and founda- 
tions have proceeded from childless men, which 
have sought to express the images of their minds, 



166 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

where those of their bodies have failed. So the 
care of posterity is most in them that have no 
posterity." Lombroso is strong on names, and 
here is his list of persons who have died childless : 
Ben Jonson, Milton (Lombroso should have 
known that Milton had daughters), Otway, Dry- 
den, Rowe, Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, Johnson, 
Goldsmith, Cowper, Hobbes, Camden — these are 
all Englishmen. He adds the names of other 
celibates — Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Fontenelle, 
Beethoven, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, 
Spinoza, Bayle, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Gray, 
Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Ben- 
tham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds, 
Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, 
Camoens, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Flaubert, 
Foscolo, Alfieri, Cavour, Pellico, Mazzini, Aleardi, 
Guerrazzi, Florence Nightingale, Catherine Stan- 
ley, Gaetana Agnesi, and Luigia Laura Bassi. 
Surely he has given us a formidable array of 
names. The one weak place in it 13, however, 
quite apparent. Another list might be made of 
distinguished persons who have married, and in 
that list would be found many who had children. 

The following persons of pronounced genius 
were not celibates: Chaucer, Shakspeare, Dante, 
Bunyan, Milton, Cervantes, Sterne, Goethe, Schil- 
ler, Bishop Berkeley, Marzolo, Edward Young, 
Coleridge, Addison, Carlyle, Landor, Comte, 
Hay don, Ary Scheffer, Anna Letitia Barbauld, 
Dickens, George Sand, Edgar A. Poe, Shelley, 






THE MAN OF GENIUS 167 

Bulwer Lytton, Rossetti. The following persons 
were not only not celibates, but were fathers: 
Oliver Cromwell, Edmund Spenser, Bismarck, 
James Beattie, De Quincey, Byron, Burns, Ten- 
nyson, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Bay- 
ard Taylor. Lists amount to little. They may 
be so constructed as to favor either side. Lom- 
broso's lists are worthless, and the lists prepared 
by the writer of this paper are of no greater 
value. Genius has absolutely nothing to do with 
marriage, and Lombroso, though he appears to 
be entirely under the thumb of his own mistaken 
theories, must have known that in naming steril- 
ity as a mark of genius he was trifling with his 
readers. 

The height of absurdity is reached when 
Lombroso makes stammering and left-handedness 
to be signs of genius. All who know anything 
about the lives of distinguished men know very 
well that the vast majority of men, whether 
gifted with genius or not, are right-handed; and 
that while a few persons like Erasmus, Charles 
Lamb, and Mendelssohn stammered, the number 
of stammerers, both among men of genius and 
men of no genius, is never large. 

According to Lombroso and Max Nordau, 
Henrik Ibsen and Victor Hugo are insane. 
Ibsen's power to sketch rapidly and with great 
force a peculiar situation or a deep emotion is 
largely due to a neurosis, the fatal tendency of 
which is in the direction of complete idiocy. The 



168 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

high poetical endowments of Ibsen are conceded, 
but "A Doll's House" and "The PiUars of So- 
ciety" are decadent literature. That Ibsen's 
parents were of a religious turn of mind and that 
the poet was reared in a religious atmosphere are 
responsible for much of his morbid moralizing 
and for his later dislike for established religious 
life and usages. His free-thinking is the decad- 
ent result of early piety. All Ibsen's characters 
live in a psychological atmosphere and in each 
career is some one vice or defect, the result of 
heredity or of some social environment. The in- 
heritance is always evil and only evil. Yet these 
characters revolve around some religious idea. 
The Christian doctrine of the Atonement, in one 
form or another, is never lost sight of. Nordau 
tells us that "Ibsen's personages voluntarily and 
joyfully bear the cross in keeping with the Chris- 
tian idea; now it is put upon the shoulders by 
force or artifice, which is, as theologians would 
say, a diabolical mockery of this idea; now the 
sacrifice for another is sincere; now mere hypoc- 
risy." But in whatever way the doctrine of the 
Atonement is introduced it becomes the centre of 
thought — the ever-recurring motif. 

Now all this to a mind like that of Lombroso 
evidences mental degeneration. Religion is in 
itself a species of delusion. The most sacred 
characters from our Saviour to the humblest of 
his followers appear to him to be victims of a 
more or less disturbed intellect. 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 169 

He tells us that Ibsen is the victim of three 
" Christ o-dogmatic obsessions" ; these are, he de- 
clares, original sin, confession, and self-sacrifice. 
They constitute a mystic circle within which his 
troubled mind revolves. Nordau, who reinforces 
Lombroso, finds Ibsen's thought chaotic, lacking 
in clearness and precision. "Everything floats 
and undulates, nebulous and amorphous, as in 
weak-brained degenerates." He seems to preach 
free-love, and "his eulogy of a licentiousness un- 
checked by any self-control, regardless of con- 
tracts, laws and morality, has made of him a 
'modern spirit,' in the eyes of Georg Brandes and 
similar protectors of those 'youths who wish to 
amuse themselves a little.' " "Unchastity in a 
man is a crime, but in a woman it is permissible." 
Everywhere is unrestrained individualism, and a 
mystico-religious obsession of voluntary self-sac- 
rifice for others. Nordau tells us that Ibsen "seems 
to exact that no girl should marry before she is 
fully matured, and possesses an experience of life 
and a knowledge of the world and of men." He 
represents Ibsen as preaching "experimental mar- 
riage for a longer or shorter period." Surely if 
Lombroso and Nordau are right, Ibsen is a raving 
maniac. But how could such a maniac obtain so 
large a following and win such unqualified praise 
from trained and judicious critics? That is a 
question Lombroso does not deign to answer. 

Lombroso calls attention to Charles Darwin. 
He is sure the great naturalist was a neuropath. 



170 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

For twenty-four years he was an invalid. He 
could not bear heat or cold. He could not con- 
verse late into the evening without insomnia. He 
suffered from dyspepsia. He had spinal anaemia, 
which suggested to Lombroso's mind epilepsy. 
During the later part of his life he was able to 
work only three hours a day. He had some re- 
markable crotchets. He wrote rough drafts of 
his correspondence upon the backs of the proof- 
sheets of his books. He indulged himself in some 
strange experiments, such as having a bassoon 
played close to the cotyledons of a plant. Be- 
fore instituting an interesting experiment he was 
absent-minded. In his old age he disliked nov- 
elty. He did not believe in hypnotism. He had 
some difficulty in pronouncing the letter w. He 
had a short nose and his ears were large and long. 
Such is Lombroso's evidence of the mental un- 
soundness of one of the greatest, if not the great- 
est, of all the naturalists and men of science this 
world has ever known. Let the reader run his eye 
over the evidence, and see what it amounts to. 
To our thinking it amounts to nothing. Certainly 
something more than chronic invalidism and a few 
eccentricities are required to make out a case of 
derangement. Dryden's couplet is as true as it 
is familiar: 

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide/' 

but it is a near alliance only, and partitions, 






THE MAN OF GENIUS 171 

though often thinner than we sometimes believe, 
do still divide the two. 

Lombroso has no doubt of the insanity of most 
of the Protestant reformers. Luther was very 
crazy. Savonarola was stark mad. Napoleon I. 
was also out of his mind. We suppose George 
Washington escaped a place among lunatics only 
through some inadvertence, for beyond doubt had 
Lombroso thought of him he would have been 
caught and labelled with all the other great men 
of every age and land. 

Walt Whitman wrote a suspicious kind of 
poetry. It was rhymeless. Lombroso speaks of 
him as the creator of that kind of poetry, but 
there were other writers who made use of it before 
his day. Nordau describes him as a vagabond, a 
reprobate, and a rake, all of which he thinks 
might be summed up in the one word "genius." 
He tells us that Whitman's poems "contain out- 
bursts of erotomania so artlessly shameless that 
their parallel in literature could hardly be found 
with the author's name attached." Whitman is 
"morally insane, and incapable of distinguishing 
between good and evil, virtue and crime." To 
prove that the poet was a megalomaniac he prints 
these lines which, being separated from their con- 
text, actually prove nothing but the mendacity 
of Max Nordau: 

"From this hour I decree that my being be freed 
from all restraints and limits. 
I go where I will, my own absolute and complete 
master. 



172 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

I breathe deeply in space. The east and the west 

are mine. 
Mine all the north and the south. I am greater 

and better than I thought myself. 
I did not know that so much boundless goodness 

was in me. 
Whoever disowns me causes me no annoyance. 
Whoever recognizes me shall be blessed, and will 

bless me." 

We have not verified these lines. We let them 
stand as they are, for the reason that they, in 
truth, prove nothing but an unworthy spirit in 
Nordau. 

In speaking of Whitman's patriotic poems 
Nordau is unable to conceal his hatred of America 
and of American institutions. He tells us that 
Whitman's patriotic poems are sycophantic and 
corrupt. They glorify the "American vote-buy- 
ing, official-bribing, power-abusing, dollar-de- 
mocracy. They cringe to the most arrogant 
Yankee conceit." He thinks "Drum Taps" may 
be described as "swaggering bombast and stilted 
patter." The dishonesty of Nordau is made ap- 
parent by his refusal to quote the best lines in 
"Drum Taps" — such lines, for instance, as we 
have in the poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" 

We suppose no one will dissent from the opin- 
ion advanced by Lombroso and others that Ma- 
homet was deranged, and that his hallucinations 
preceded violent epileptic attacks which not only 
convulsed his body, but affected as well his mind. 
Maudsley says, in his "Responsibility in Mental 
Diseases :" 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 173 

"There can be little, if any, doubt in the minds 
of those who do not subscribe to that faith (Ma- 
hometanism) , that an epileptic seizure was the occa- 
sion of Mahomet's first vision and revelation, and 
that, deceived or deceiving, he made advantage of 
his distemper to beget himself the reputation of a 
divine authority. The character of his visions was 
exactly of that kind which medical experience 
shows to be natural to epilepsy. Similar visions, 
which are believed in as realities and truths by 
those who have them, occur not infrequently to epi- 
leptic patients confined in asylums. For my part, 
I would as soon belive that there was deception in 
the trance which converted Saul the persecutor into 
Paul the Apostle, as believe that Mahomet at first 
doubted the reality of the events which he saw in 
his vision." 

Washington Irving, in his ''Life of Mahomet," 

says: 

"He would be seized with a violent trembling, 
followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion, 
during which perspiration would stream from his 
forehead in the coldest weather; he would lie with 
his eyes closed, foaming at the mouth and bellowing 
like a young camel. Ayesha, one of his wives, and 
Zaid, one of his disciples, are among the persons cited 
as testifying to that effect. They considered him at 
such times as under the influence of a revelation. He 
had such attacks, however, in Mecca, before the 
Koran was revealed to him." 

Were Mahomet now living, he would be con- 
fined in an asylum, and the Koran would remain 
unrevealed. We shall never know how many 
revelations as wonderful as any which dawned 



174 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

upon the astonished vision of Mahomet and 
Swedenborg are prevented, and how many incipi- 
ent religions are nipped in the bud by judicious 
doses of bromide of potassium, belladonna, and 
zinc, by confinement in the wards of an asylum, 
and by other remedial agents. Certain it is that 
asylums are thickly settled with prophets, saints, 
spiritual healers, and mediums of one kind or 
another, of whose visions and revelations the 
world is deprived. Yet even now, and in our own 
country, there are some who escape confinement 
and openly minister to the deluded multitudes 
that follow them. The founder of "Christian 
Science" is an illustration of what we are saying, 
as was also the late John Alexander Dowie, who 
founded the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion." 
Dowie died as he lived, firm in the belief in his 
divine mission. An hour before his death it was 
suggested by one of his followers, whose faith 
failed him, that a physician be called. The aged 
leader rose on his couch, and gazing fixedly at 
the watchers, said: "I need no physician. God is 
all in -all." 

Ann Lee was an epileptic, and her revelations 
and system of theology are the outcome of in- 
sanity. She is described as "a wild creature from 
birth," a prey to hysteria and convulsions, violent 
in her conduct, ambitious of notice, and devoted 
to the lust of power. 

It is now believed by many that Joseph Smith, 
the founder of Mormonism and, it may be, the 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 175 

author of the "Book of Mormon," was an epi- 
leptic. Much in his life seems to accord with that 
theory. The character of his work and his own 
words raise the suspicion that he was not wholly 
in his right mind. He was vain, boastful and li- 
centious, and withal very emotional and religious. 
His theology is a purely pagan composite. He 
believed that there were many gods, and that they 
were polygamous or "sealed" human beings 
grown divine. That the great God over all gods 
was once a man was with him a foundation doc- 
trine, for he held that it was man's duty and 
privilege to learn how to become divine. He 
thought that God the Father and Jesus Christ 
were two persons in the same sense in which Mat- 
thew and John were two persons, and that God 
and Jesus Christ both had material parts, and 
that they had wives and children. The grotesque 
and heterogeneous nature of his creed would seem 
to fit in with a theory of mental unsoundness. It 
must also be remembered that his ancestry was 
somewhat neurotic. 

Beyond doubt many of the historic personages 
brought before us upon the pages of Lombroso's 
book, "The Man of Genius," were more or less de- 
ranged, but the sweeping statement that all men 
of genius are neurotic is not only absurd but in- 
sulting to the most gifted minds our world has 
ever known. It is no doubt true that "great 
thinkers and poets are constitutionally inclined 
to melancholy," but in most cases it is because 



176 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

they are constitutionally sensitive to the sorrow 
and distress of the world and alive to the mystery 
of human life. For the same reason many of 
them incline to pessimism. Aristotle was right 
when, many centuries ago, he declared that "men 
of genius are likely to be of melancholy tempera- 
ment." Men of genius are likely to be as well men 
of knowledge, and while knowledge means usually 
increased power, it does not always bring with it 
happiness. There is a sense in which Goethe's 
words are true, "Every increase of knowledge is 
an increase of sorrow." "He that increaseth 
knowledge, increaseth sorrow," exclaims the Sa- 
cred Writer. How often we see an ignoramus 
approach a serious surgical operation with no 
anxiety. The well informed man discovers reason 
for apprehension where the unenlightened rustic 
is filled with calm assurance. The courage of 
youth is, for the most part, due to inexperience. 
The young man is certain of everything because 
he knows so little. It is true that "fools rush in 
where angels fear to tread." Multitudes of earn- 
est souls trace their religious doubts to increase of 
knowledge. "If only I knew less," said a sorrow- 
ful sceptic, "I could believe more, and believing 
more I should be a stronger and a happier man." 
The poet who said, "There is always in the eye 
of genius a tear," was not far out of the way; 
but the shallow author of that unworthy book, 
"The Man of Genius," only smutched a subject 
of which he was incompetent to treat. 



THE MAN OF GENIUS 177 

The optimist is good in his place, but as much 
may be said for the pessimist. Not always, but 
often, there is about the optimist a certain vul- 
garity not to be discovered in the pessimist. 
There is an offensive smacking of the lips over 
the good things of this life, and an indifference to 
the troubles of others that not infrequently render 
the optimist somewhat disgusting to men of finer 
nerve and kinder heart. We know little of Lom- 
broso as a man, but we gather from his sometimes 
blasphemous and always humiliating pages a be- 
lief that he is an optimist. The smack of the 
lips, the self-satisfaction, and the vulgar assur- 
ance are in evidence upon nearly every page. His 
book will be short-lived, and he himself will be 
soon forgotten, but the men and women of genius 
who are insulted in nearly every line he has writ- 
ten will live on in the grateful remembrance of 
generations yet to come. 



VIII 
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 



"I have thought in my heart that it were a singu- 
lar good work if the Lord would stirre up the 
hearts of some or other of his people in England to 
give some maintenance toward some Schoole or Col- 
legiate exercise this way, wherein there should be 
Anatomies and other instructions that way, and 
where there might be some recompence given to 
any that should bring in any vegetable or other 
thing that is vertuous in the way of Physick." 
— John Eliot in a Letter to Mr. Shepherd. 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORE 

IT is sometimes represented by those who are 
unacquainted with the facts in the case that 
physicians, through long familiarity with pain 
and distress, come in time to lose every feeling of 
compassion, and that in many instances they ac- 
quire a hard, grasping and avaricious disposition 
that scruples not to make gain out of the physi- 
cal needs and mental discomforts of a sick world. 
A man of more than ordinary intelligence said in 
the presence of a large number of persons, none 
of whom disputed his statement, that most physi- 
cians were so intent upon a fat fee that they had 
neither time nor inclination to serve men of mod- 
erate means. He went on to explain that doctors, 
through trading in sickness and death, come in 
the course of a few years of professional life to 
kill within their own bosoms the lovely and gra- 
cious feeling of pity. "They view," said he, 
"their patients as cases to be studied and ex- 
ploited. To the modern doctor Mrs. Jones is in 
no sense of the word Mrs. Jones, but only 'case 
No. 520,' and his interest in the unfortunate lady 
extends no further than the amount of his fee and 
the result of his experiments." 

The severe accusation is not wholly without 

semblance of truth. There are among physicians 

some black sheep. What profession is without 

its share of inky wool? Even the ministry of 

181 



182 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

religion has its conspicuous specimens of decadent 
divinity. In a certain sense every man, no mat- 
ter what his calling in life, dwells in a glass 
house. In most cities, and in some small villages, 
there are a few medical men who are "in business" 
for "revenue" only; and there are hospitals and 
asylums in which carelessness and brutality are 
not unknown. It would be worse than foolish to 
deny that some unworthy men enter the profes- 
sion, and that certain institutions of charity and 
mercy are such in name only. But a mercenary 
spirit is by no means common among medical men. 
On the contrary, the average doctor is proverbi- 
ally careless in money matters. His absorption in 
his profession seems to render him indifferent to 
his own financial interests. I know of a doctor 
of great ability and large practice who could 
never have collected half the fees due him had not 
his wife, with a commendable interest in good 
housekeeping, made out the bills and forwarded 
them to their proper destinations. A lady said 
to me : "I wish the doctor would give me his bill. 
My husband has three times asked for it without 
result; I am told that he never sends out a bill 
until some pressing necessity reminds him of his 
account book." 

The "Aphorisms" of Hippocrates reflect a 
noble and beautiful spirit, but it cannot be for- 
gotten that De la Mettrie, the physician of Fred- 
erick the Great, left the members of his profession 
advice of the most selfish and cynical character. 
De la Mettrie said : 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 183 

"Distrust your professional brother — medicus 
medicum odit. If you are in a fix lay the respon- 
sibility on the backs of the consultants. Never try 
an active remedy on a person of high position; it 
is better that a great lord should yield to human 
destiny, even prematurely, than that the doctor 
should be compromised. In the case of consulta- 
tions try to arrive on the scene a quarter of an hour 
before the others, in order that you may see the pa- 
tient alone and gain his confidence while seeming to 
study his disease. Visit the patient during the time 
the remedy is displaying its effects; make some 
small change in the mode of administration; thus 
you will supplant not only one or two brother prac- 
titioners, but the whole faculty. Take care to stand 
well with the surgeons and pay court to the apothe- 
caries. Do not give medicines to those who do not 
like them. In the case of the others order only 
drugs that are anodyne, well known, and have not 
a bad taste. Do not pay too many visits; this 
would gain for you the reputation of being eager 
for fees. Unpunctuality will be excused if you 
plead the number of people you have to see. Al- 
ways have the air of being busy. If you are asked 
out to dinner, arrive late and look as if you had 
been hurrying, and arrange that you shall be sent 
for at dessert. If women discuss the causes of a 
disease, do not contradict them, but agree with 
them. If women advertise you, your fortune is 
made. Above all, do not despise the support of 
ladies' maids and nurses." 

Yet few doctors die rich. Not more than forty 
per cent, of all the young men who are graduated 
from medical schools ever derive from their pro- 
fession an income of more than $1,000 a year. 
There are not a few physicians in rural districts 



184 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

who never earn in the practice of medicine more 
than $500 a year. The standard of education is 
high, and the examinations are increasingly diffi- 
cult to pass. A man must study more to become 
a good physician than to qualify as an educated 
lawyer. And the rewards of medical service, 
viewed from a commercial perspective, are insig- 
nificant when compared with the golden recom- 
pense that awaits a successful attorney. Think 
of the "graft," "boodle," "perquisites" and other 
interesting things that hang directly over the 
heads of legally educated gentlemen. Few phy- 
sicians are subjected to any great temptation 
from what are facetiously described in political 
journals as "plums." The worst that can be said 
of a doctor is that he seeks fat fees, but these 
are never so corpulent as fat offices. 

Dr. Robert C. Myles, a New York physician of 
distinction, said to a representative of the New 
York Herald: 

"The number of able young physicians in this 
city is growing rapidly. The city is full of young 
men who have great ability and natural gifts. They 
have studied hard and made brilliant records. They 
will be heard from in the future. Then there are 
able, modest, unassuming men with offices in side 
streets who are really as competent as others widely 
known and of assured fame. And though they are 
equally successful in the same classes of cases, their 
fees are comparatively small and their meagre in- 
comes altogether out of proportion to the high 
character of their achievements. So it is evident 
that no one can say just what the physician's fees 
shall be." 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 185 

The late Sir James Paget followed the after- 
histories of 1,000 medical students in Great Brit- 
ain and Ireland. Of these 23 achieved distin- 
guished success, 66 considerable success, 507 fair 
success, 124< very limited success, 41 died while 
students, 87 died within twelve years of com- 
mencing practice, 56 failed entirely in the pro- 
fession, and 96 abandoned it for some other call- 
ing. At a later date Dr. Squire Sprigge made a 
somewhat similar study of 250 students, and with 
somewhat similar results. In America the aver- 
ages are better, but the general results are not 
very different. 

Why do young men of ability make choice of 
a profession so exacting and arduous, and offer- 
ing, in a large proportion of cases, such meagre 
financial returns? There can be but one answer 
to that question. The choice is made from a love 
of the profession, and from a willingness, born of 
that love, to incur the risks and to face the hard- 
ships incident to a medical practice. Young men 
when they commence the study of the healing art 
know many of the difficulties that must be over- 
come. Their professors, as if to discourage any 
mercenary straggler who may have unwittingly 
matriculated, do not hesitate to refer to the peril 
and self-sacrifice of a doctor's life. A medical 
lecturer once in my hearing thus addressed his 
class : 

"Young gentlemen, the path of a conscientious 
doctor is not strewn with roses. Much of his prac- 



186 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tice is night-work. His time is never his own. 
When other men fly from the sick room or the hos- 
pital, frightened by the contagions and infections 
of such diseases as small-pox, yellow fever and 
plague, the physician must remain at his post even 
at the risk of his life. A thousand political honors 
and emoluments await the lawyer, and the wealth 
of the Indies knocks at the successful merchant's 
door, but hard work, personal peril and moderate 
compensation are most likely the only results you 
will have to show in the final making up of your ac- 
count. Over much of the way no one will travel 
with you but the minister of religion whose work 
and spirit are not unlike your own. Yet if you love 
your profession, and desire to give yourself to its 
development and to the service of your fellow men, 
you have before you in the practice of medicine a 
future of which you may well be proud." 

Does anyone think such words likely to attract 
to the study of medicine men of mercenary spirit ? 
No, that spirit is far from common among medi- 
cal students and physicians. It never was com- 
mon among them. So long ago as the time of 
the famous Dr. Mead the same superiority to sor- 
did considerations prevailed. During the impris- 
onment of Dr. Friend, who in 1722 was sent to 
the Tower for expressing too freely his mind on 
matters of state, his colleague, Dr. Mead, though 
of an entirely different political persuasion, cared 
for his medical practice without compensation. 
When Dr. Friend was set at liberty Dr. Mead pre- 
sented him with all the money he had received 
from his patients — five thousand guineas. 

Well, that was long ago? Yes, it was a long 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 187 

time ago as we measure the years of a life-time, 
but the same spirit is still active in the profession. 
The beautiful kindness of Dr. Michael K. War- 
ner, who died in Baltimore, Md., July 22, 1905, 
should be remembered. The bare statement of it 
refutes a thousand calumnies and gives us, as I 
believe, a good picture of the true spirit of a large 
part of the medical profession. Because many of 
Dr. Warner's patients were poor, the doctor, just 
before his death, destroyed all books containing 
accounts against them. This he did to make it 
impossible for his administrators to press those 
who were unable to meet without great personal 
sacrifice the just demands that might be made 
upon them. Dr. Warner said that his patients 
knew what they owed, and that he was sure they 
would, most of them, so far as they were able, pay 
his heirs when he was gone. It would be impos- 
sible for most physicians to follow Dr. Warner's 
example, and destroy, in view of approaching 
death, all evidences of obligation ; but the cultiva- 
tion of Dr. Warner's spirit is practicable, and is, 
I believe, shared today by an increasingly large 
body of noble and self -forgetting men in the pro- 
fession of medicine. 

The writer of this paper is peculiarly interested 
in physicians because, though he has been all his 
life a clergyman, he was early trained for their 
profession, and was in 1870 graduated from the 
College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of 
New York. During three busy pastorates he has 



188 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

continued to follow in thought and reading the 
marvelous developments of the healing art. There 
were physicians of large experience and ability in 
the three churches he has served — strong, kind- 
hearted, and wise men, all of them, of whose coun- 
sel he was always glad to avail himself. They 
were, without a single exception, good to the 
poor. One physician connected with his church 
in Portland, Oregon, attended without compensa- 
tion a number of indigent families in the parish. 
The writer once said to him: "You are a busy 
man, and have a large practice. The duties of 
your professorship in the Medical College are no 
light matter. You hardly do yourself justice in 
giving so much of your time and strength to 
charity." He replied : "You respond to calls out- 
side of your parish, and I know you would be 
ashamed to confine your sympathies and services 
to the single church of which you are the pastor. 
Is, then, the profession of medicine so ignoble a 
thing that it may not stand side by side with that 
of religion?" 

The heroism of medical men is astonishing 
when one considers how little applause it wins. 
We all admire the brave soldier who follows his 
flag into the thickest of the fight. If he is dis- 
abled through wounds received in battle how 
gladly we vote him a pension. But the daring of 
the doctor is greater than that of the soldier. The 
latter goes into battle to the sound of martial 
music, surrounded by enthusiastic comrades, while 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 189 

the physician, alone and with no public demon- 
stration of approval, enters the pest-house and 
there calmly and without ostentation ministers to 
suffering humanity. The soldier is not rendered 
by his peculiar training more sensitive to the 
perils of his dangerous profession. On the con- 
trary, the more extensive his training and experi- 
ence, the more indifferent he becomes to danger. 
It is not so with the educated physician. To his 
cultivated mind a thousand risks in the matter of 
contagion, of which the ordinary man knows noth- 
ing, are clear and distinct. The civilized world 
was moved to admiration by the story of Father 
Damien's courage and self-sacrifice. The priest 
went to live with lepers on the Island of Molokai 
in order to minister to them in spiritual things. 
But when in a southern country I visited a leper 
hospital I found there, hard at work and with no 
thought of danger or of disgust at the loath- 
someness of the disease, a number of able physi- 
cians and efficient nurses. Brave, patient, self- 
sacrificing, loyal to the spirit of science, those 
noble men and women were working day and 
night to help and comfort the distressed. 

In this connection it is interesting to notice the 
two widely sundered views of hospital-life that 
have found melodious expression through the in- 
spired pens of two women of wholly dissimilar 
temperaments. In weird lines Rose Terry Cooke 
describes the death-fancies of an old sailor who 
is waiting to go out with the tide : 



190 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

IN THE HOSPITAL. 

'How the wind yells on the Gulf and prairie! 

How it rattles in the windows wide! 
And the rats squeak like our old ship's rigging; 

I shall die with the turn of the tide. 

I've had a rough life on the ocean, 

And a tough life on the land; 
Now I'm like a broken hulk in the dockyard — 

I can't stir foot nor hand. 

There are green trees in the Salem graveyard, 
By the meeting house steps they grow; 

And there they put my poor old mother, 
The third in the leeward row. 

There's the low red house on the corner, 
With a slant roof and a well-sweep behind, 

And yellow-headed fennel in the garden — 
How I see it when I go blind! 

I wish I had a mug of cold water 

From the bottom of that old curb well, 

I wish my mother's face was here alongside, 
While I hear that tolling bell! 

There's a good crop of corn in the meadow, 
And the biggest boy ain't there to hoe; 

They'll get in the apples and the pumpkins, 
But I've done my last chores below. 

Don't you hear the norther risin', doctor? 

How it yells and hollers, far and wide! 
And the moon's a-shinin' on that graveyard — 

Hold on, I'm a-goin' with the tide." 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 191 

With different spirit, yet with like genius, 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells of kindness dis- 
covered where kindness is not always found: 

KINDNESS FIRST KNOWN IN A HOSPITAL. 

'The place seemed new and strange as death, 
The white strait bed, with others strait and white, 
Like graves dug side by side at measured lengths, 
And quiet people walking in and out 
With wonderful low voices and soft steps, 
And apparitional equal care for each, 
Astonished her with order, silence, law: 
And when a gentle hand held out a cup, 
She took it as you do at sacrament, 
Half awed, half melted — not being used, indeed, 
To so much love as makes the form of love 
And courtesy of manners. Delicate drinks 
And rare white bread, to which some dying eyes 
Were turned in observation. O my God, 
How sick we must be ere we make men just! 
I think it frets the saints in heaven to see 
How many desolate creatures on the earth 
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship 
And social comfort in a hospital ! ' ' 

In my "Companionship of Books," I recounted 
the heroism of Dr. Franz Mueller, of Vienna, who 
fell a victim to the bubonic plague when that dis- 
ease was first under bacteriological investigation 
in that city in 1897. At the risk of tedious repe- 
tition, let me say that Dr. Mueller contracted the 
malady from the bacilli in culture tubes. When 
he became certain that he was infected he imme- 
diately locked himself in an isolated room and 



192 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

posted a message on the window-pane reading 
thus: ''I am suffering from the plague. Please 
do not send a doctor to me, as in any event my 
end will come in four or five days." 

At once a number of his associates, all of them 
young physicians with much to live for, and with 
full knowledge of the chances to which they would 
expose themselves, stepped forward and not only 
offered their services, but, in some cases, begged 
to be sent to Dr. Mueller. The patient refused 
to receive them, and died alone within the time 
predicted. He wrote a farewell letter to his 
parents, placed it against the window, so that it 
could be copied from the outside, and then burned 
the original with his own hands, fearful that it 
might be preserved and carry out the mysterious 
and deadly germ. It is possible that Dr. Mueller 
might have been saved had he been willing to per- 
mit his fellow physicians to encounter the great 
danger they would have faced in treating him. 
To my thinking the heroism of Dr. Mueller and 
his associate physicians was much greater than 
that required for a feat of arms on the field of 
battle. 

I am aware that it would not be difficult to place 
over against what has been said the actual record 
of enormous medical fees paid under peculiar cir- 
cumstances to distinguished physicians. Every 
one knows that there have been some medical men 
of large means. Our fathers used to read fifty 
or more years ago a delightful little book called 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 193 

"The Gold-Headed Cane " All the doctors de- 
scribed in that book were men of the noblest qual- 
ity, and they were also men of large fortunes. 
Sir William Gull received, it is reported, for treat- 
ing King Edward in 1871, when he was the 
Prince of Wales, the handsome sum of ten thou- 
sand pounds. The Vegetarian is authority for 
the statement that Sir Morell Mackenzie received 
for his attendance upon the late Emperor Fred- 
erick twenty thousand pounds. The doctors who 
prescribed for Queen Victoria in her last illness 
got two thousand guineas each. Dr. Lapponi had 
for removing a cyst from the side of Leo XIII. a 
sum that would be in the money of our country 
about twenty-five hundred dollars. Dr. Dimsdale 
went to St. Petersburgh years ago to vaccinate 
the empress, and he received for his services ten 
thousand pounds with five thousand pounds for 
traveling expenses, and later a life pension of five 
hundred pounds a year. Dr. Lorenz, of Vienna, 
went to Chicago to operate upon a child who had 
congenital dislocation of the hip. He had for his 
services one hundred thousand dollars and travel- 
ing expenses for himself and his assistant. 

Mr. D'Arcy Power in discussing the "Fees of 
Our Ancestors" reminds his readers of the old- 
time story of the skillful Democedes, who re- 
ceived from Darius Hystaspes of Susa a fee 
that our modern surgeons may dream of in 
"the first sweet sleep of the night," but that 
none of them may ever hope to obtain in any- 



194 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

thing more substantial than a dream. Da- 
rius had dislocated his foot at the ankle- 
joint, and Democedes was called in after the 
failure of an Egyptian surgeon. His treat- 
ment was successful, and he was at once pre- 
sented with two golden fetters, in delicate allusion 
to his position. Having delighted Darius by ask- 
ing him "whether he meant to double his punish- 
ment, that monarch told him to go through the 
harem as the man who had saved the king's life. 
The ladies each gave him a golden bowl piled up 
with staters, so many of which fell on the floor 
that the slave who conducted him made a hand- 
some fortune by picking them up." 

It would not be difficult to describe other large 
fees, including the contested one of ex-Queen 
Kilinakalani's physician. 

All these fees, with the single exception of the 
one received by Dr. Lorenz, were paid by royalty, 
and were in reality gifts rather than fees. The 
physicians who had them may imagine that they 
were in return for services rendered, but, in truth, 
they were in no sense a quid pro quo. The phy- 
sicians were men of exceptional skill, and in treat- 
ing royalty they assumed an exceptional respon- 
sibility; yet men of even their unusual ability 
could expect such compensation in only rare in- 
stances. It must be remembered also that these 
fees were not in settlement of medical bills alone, 
but covered the expense of long journeys and the 
loss to private practice occasioned by protracted 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 195 

absence from home. In the case of Dr. Lorenz 
we have a scientific man of world-wide reputation 
crossing the ocean to treat the child of a multi- 
millionaire who could, were he so inclined, and 
were the thing permissible, buy out half a dozen 
small kingdoms in Europe or elsewhere. And it 
must not be forgotten that Dr. Lorenz while in 
this country treated a number of poor persons 
without compensation, and gave demonstrations 
of his skill in hospitals for the benefit of Ameri- 
can physicians. 

The Bulletin of Pharmacy has this witty ac- 
count of the way in which a distinguished sur- 
geon was defrauded out of a fee to which he was 
entitled : 

"Sir Morel Mackenzie once received a dispatch 
from Antwerp asking him for his charges for a cer- 
tain operation. He replied £500, and was told to 
come at once. When he stepped upon the dock he 
was met by three men in mourning, who informed 
him sadly that he had come too late; the patient 
had died that morning. 

'But/ said the spokesman of the party, 'we 
know that you did what you could, and we do not 
intend that you shall be out of pocket a shilling. 
We shall pay you your full fee/ And they did. 
'And now,' said the man, 'since you are here, what 
do you say to visiting the city hospital and giving 
a clinic for the benefit of our local surgeons? It 
is not often they have an opportunity of benefitting 
by such science as yours/ 

Sir Morel said he would gladly comply. He 
went to the hospital and performed many opera- 
tions, among which were two of a similar nature to 



196 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

that for which he had been called over. When he 
had finished all thanked him profusely. On the 
steamer going home he met a friend who had a 
business house in Antwerp. 

'Pretty scurvy trick they played on you, Sir 
Morel/ 

'What do you mean/ asked the surgeon. 

'Told you the patient died before you arrived, 
didn't they?' 

'Yes/ 

"Lied. You operated on him and a friend with 
the same trouble at the clinic. Got two operations 
for one price/ " 

Dr. Murray, of New York City, is reported 
to have said to a representative of the press : 

"I know of a case where a foreign merchant do- 
ing business in New York entered a leading hos- 
pital of this city as a poor man. He was operated 
on for appendicitis. It was a successful operation 
and the man speedily recovered, yet he paid only 
the hospital ward rate of ten dollars a week, and 
went on his way rejoicing. It was afterward dis- 
covered that he was a thriving merchant worth a 
hundred thousand dollars." 

Whether a fee is large or small must depend 
upon circumstances. No ordinary patient would 
be willing to pay one hundred dollars to a physi- 
cian of average standing in his profession, nor, 
indeed, would he willingly pay that sum to a phy- 
sician of any standing, for a single office call; 
but Mr. Armour, Mr. Astor, or Mr. Carnegie 
might be ready to pay that sum twice over to 
a physician of exceptional ability for less time 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 197 

than is required for an office call. It is not a ques- 
tion of what a certain doctor could collect under 
the law from either of the above-named gentle- 
men, but it is a question of that doctor's special 
worth to his multi-millionaire patient under excep- 
tional circumstances at a given time. There is 
no good reason why a distinguished physician 
should refuse a large fee, but if he makes that fee 
the measure of his usefulness to ordinary men and 
women he is false to the spirit of his profession, 
and may be accounted selfish and mercenary. 
Medical societies have been from time immemorial 
pursuing quacks and irregular practitioners, but 
to my thinking no quackery is deserving of so 
severe a censure as is the cold and selfish temper 
of indifFerenec to the sorrow and distress of man- 
kind when lodged in the heart of a medical man. 
The physician, like the minister of religion, is 
something more than a business man ; and he can 
never view his services to the world in the light 
of mere dollars and cents without debasing him- 
self and disgracing his profession. 

It is not generally known, or, at least, it is not 
generally remembered, that medically educated 
men have furnished no small part of the perma- 
nent literature of the world. Ficinus gave us a 
Latin version of Plato; Julius Scaliger was a 
great literary critic; Perrault translated Vitru- 
vius and lectured on geometry and architecture; 
Swammerdam was one of the most celebrated of 
Dutch naturalists; Sir Thomas Browne will be 



198 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

remembered as the author of "Religio Medici" 
and the "Treatise on Urn Burial;" Schiller, the 
great German poet, was educated as a physician ; 
Akenside was not only a doctor but a famous 
English poet; Armstrong was a poet; Smollet 
gave us "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," 
and "Humphry Clinker;" Goldsmith was a de- 
lightful author; Madden gave us the once popu- 
lar "Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Pal- 
estine ;" Camus wrote "La Medicine de PEsprite" 
and "Abdeker, or the Art of Cosmetics;" Valen- 
tine Mott's "Travels in Europe and the East" de- 
lighted our grandfathers ; Draper left us a "His- 
tory of the Intellectual Development of Europe ;" 
Huxley's "Lay Sermons" are well worth reading, 
and many a year will go by before the essays, 
stories and poems of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
are forgotten. It would not be difficult to name 
two or three hundred physicians who will be re- 
membered because of services rendered to litera- 
ture. 

And sometimes literature, which has been so en- 
riched by the genius of medical men, makes com- 
pensation in kind; an illustration of which gen- 
erosity is furnished by a German writer in the 
following Latin lines in memory of the distin- 
guished scientist, Dr. Virchow: 

"Sumrao cum ingenio 
Morbos illustravit; 
Explorando mortuos 
Vivos adiuvavit. 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 199 



Vitae persecutus est 

Intima arcana 
Et ubique somnia 

Dissipavit vana. 

'Omnis' dixit 'cellula 

E cellula exorta' ; 
Turn doctrinae lucidae 

Patefacta porta. 

Quae reliquit opera 

Perdiu vigebunt 
Magna haec vestigia 

Non evanescebunt." 

The New York Medical Journal prints its 
readers this translation : 

"With sublimest genius 
On disease light giving, 
Through the study of the dead 
Aided he the living. 

To Life's innermost recess 

Hath he penetrated; 
Empty dreams on every hand 

Hath he dissipated. 

'Every cell from cell hath sprung* — s 
Thus he spake, and straighway 

Illuminating Science saw 
Open wide her gateway. 

So the works that he hath left 

Shall endure forever, 
And his mighty footprints be 

Obliterated never/' 



200 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Women also have played an honorable part In 
the practice of medicine. Seven hundred years 
ago a woman had charge of the department of 
"Diseases of Women" at the University of Sal- 
erno; and the chair which she filled with such 
credit to herself was afterward held in turn by 
medical women of trained mind and large experi- 
ence through seven professorships. History has 
preserved the names of such distinguished women 
as Trotula, the noted gynecologist; Abella, the 
author of a once famous work on "Melancholy"; 
Mercuriade, a celebrated writer on medical 
themes, and a surgeon of exceptional ability ; Re- 
becca Guarana, a distinguished author and prac- 
titioner; Alessandra Giliani, the famous specialist 
in anatomy who invented a new method of prepar- 
ing anatomical specimens. Of her Dr. James J. 
Walsh writes in the third volume of "Interna- 
tional Clinics" (nineteenth series), recently pub- 
lished in Indianapolis : 

"She would cleanse most skillfully the smallest 
vein, the arteries, all the ramifications of the ves- 
sels, without lacerating or dividing them; and to 
prepare them for demonstration she would fill 
them with various colored liquids which, after being 
driven into the vessels, would harden without de- 
stroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these 
vessels so naturally that, added to the wonderful 
explanations and teachings of the master, Mondino, 
they brought him great fame and credit." 

The physician, like the lawyer, weighs evi- 
dence, only his evidence is more exact than that 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 201 

of the lawyer, and far more trustworthy. It is 
the evidence not of fallible and sometimes dishon- 
est men, but of impartial and remorseless nature. 
The statement of the patient goes for less every 
year with the trained and scientific physician. 
The medical man is possessed of surer means of 
coming at the exact truth. Less and less he relies 
upon the word of his patient, and more and more 
he trusts his own observation, his delicately ad- 
justed instruments, and his careful laboratory 
analysis. It used to be said that medicine could 
never be accounted an exact science. But medi- 
cine is rapidly becoming mathematical in its pre- 
cision, and every year it is harder for an un- 
trained mind to keep pace with its swift march. 
How resolutely the medical societies fight 
quacks and empiricism. If they would only give 
the matter due consideration they would see that 
the increasing severity in the standard by which 
the physician is to be measured is largely respon- 
sible for the increasing army of quacks. The ex- 
actions of legitimate medicine are too great for 
the limited capacities of inferior minds. The re- 
sult is that such minds seek easier and less scien- 
tific channels. Many empirics are really good 
physicians up to a certain point, but beyond that 
point they cannot go. And it is just as true that 
many proprietary medicines are regular prescrip- 
tions such as physicians commonly employ put 
up in a more convenient and agreeable form. If 
medicine continues to advance in the future as 



202 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

rapidly as it has in the last half century, no sin- 
gle mind will be able to qualify in the profession 
as an entirety. All physicians will become spe- 
cialists, and the general family practitioner will 
disappear. 

It is not always an easy thing to distinguish 
the honest physician from his cousin-german, the 
quack. The two have points of resemblance that 
are very confusing to the unenlightened non-pro- 
fessional mind. George Washington had in his 
last illness the services of several medical gentle- 
men who were regarded as the ablest practitioners 
at the time in the country ; and yet in 1800, about 
eight years after the death of Washington, Dr. 
Dick and his associate medical brother signed the 
following statement which was published in the 
Medical Repository: 

"Some time on Friday, the night of December 
13th, General Washington was attacked with an 
inflammatory affection of the upper part of the 
windpipe, called in technical language cynanche 
trachealis. The disease commenced with a violent 
ague accompanied with some pain in the upper and 
fore part of the throat, a sense of stricture, a 
cough, and a difficult, rather than a painful, deglu- 
tition. The necessity of blood-letting suggested it- 
self to the General, and he procured a bleeder in 
the neighborhood, who took from his arm in the 
night twelve or fourteen ounces of blood. He would 
not by any means be prevailed upon by the family 
to send for the attending physician until the fol- 
lowing morning; the physician arrived at Mount 
Vernon about eleven o'clock on Saturday. Dis- 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 203 

covering the case to be highly alarming, and fore- 
seeing the fatal tendency of the disease, two con- 
sulting physicians were immediately sent for. In 
the interim were employed two copious bleedings, a 
blister was applied to the part affected, two mod- 
erate doses of calomel were given, and an injection 
was administered, which operated on the lower in- 
testines, but all without any perceptible advantage, 
the respiration becoming still more difficult and dis- 
tressing. Upon the arrival of the first of the con- 
sulting physicians it was agreed that, as yet there 
were no signs of accumulation in the bronchial ves- 
sels of the lungs, to try the result of another bleed- 
ing. When about thirty-two ounces of blood were 
drawn without the smallest apparent alleviation of 
the disease, vapors of vinegar and water were fre- 
quently inhaled, ten grains of calomel were given, 
succeeded by repeated doses of emetic tartar, 
amounting in all to five or six grains, with no other 
effect than a copious discharge from the bowels. 
The powers of life were now manifestly yielding 
to the force of the disorder, respiration grew more 
and more contracted and imperfect, till half past 
eleven o'clock on Saturday night, when retaining 
the full possession of his intellect he expired with- 
out a struggle. 

Several hours before his decease, after repeated 
efforts to be understood, he succeeded in expressing 
a desire that he might be permitted to die without 
interruption. 

(Signed) James Craik, Alt. Phys. 

Elisha C. Dick, Cons. Phys." 

The Medical Record for December 29th, 1900, 
has this to say of the treatment which Washing- 
ton received at the hands of two of the most dis- 
tinguished physicians of the day: 



204 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"The treatment of an old man, sick with a dis- 
ease very exhausting to vitality, and so severe that 
the illness lasted but twenty-four hours, consisted 
in the abstraction of between two and three quarts 
of blood, the administration of about gr. xx. of cal- 
omel and gr. vi. of tartar emetic, an injection, with 
external applications of a blister — and a pressure 
of the hand. This treatment administered to a well 
man in so short a time would go far toward prepar- 
ing him for his last journey. 

The repeated regretful statements of the physi- 
cians that they noted no benefit from their treat- 
ment, with continual repetition of the unsatisfac- 
tory means of cure already employed, and their ap- 
parent inability to suggest others, and the last re- 
quest of General Washington that he might be al- 
lowed to 'die without interruption' have their 
pathetic side. Brandy was surely in common use at 
the time, and no doubt 'in the house.' Peruvian 
bark, iron, and digitalis were well-known drugs in 
the materia medica of 1800, but there is no record 
of their use. The almshouse patient today has 
more rational treatment than the ex-president of 
the United States had in 1800." 

Will some one tell us how we are to distinguish 
the able physician from the untutored empiric on 
one hand, and from the stupid servant of habit 
following his routine practice on the other? We 
are reminded of old Dr. Samuel Garth, who wrote 
the once famous "Dispensary," and who was 
knighted by George I. When Garth saw his phy- 
sicians consulting together just before his death, 
he lifted himself in bed and said with some effort, 
"Dear gentlemen, let me die a natural death." 
Washington, it would seem, did not die a natural 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 205 

death. He escaped powder and sword, only to 
fall at last before the deadly lancet of the regular 
practitioner. 

It goes without saying that the popularity of 
the physician must always depend upon the suc- 
cess of his treatment. He may be a very wise 
man, but if his patients die he might as well be 
an uneducated quack so far as any regard for his 
professional services is concerned. And if he suc- 
ceeds, the great world of suffering men and 
women will not stop to enquire into his scientific 
attainments, nor will they ask if he is a member 
in "good and regular standing" in some accred- 
ited medical society. The story is that when 
Lorenzo the Magnificent, Grand Duke of Tus- 
cany, died, the patient's friends caught the fa- 
mous physician from Padua who had failed to 
cure the great man, and threw him down the well 
in the quadrangle. We do not throw unsuccess- 
ful doctors down wells in these days, but we cover 
them with abuse, and in some cases we prosecute 
them for malpractice. Not many years ago a 
physician in one of our western cities, having 
failed to cure the mayor, found posted upon his 
office door a notice to quit the place under pen- 
alty of being shot. 

The government of the United States, in 1864, 
sent Dr. Samuel A. Mudd to the Dry Tortugas 
for setting the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, 
the assassin of President Lincoln. Booth in his 
flight from Washington after shooting the Presi- 



206 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

dent stopped at Dr. Mudd's house to have his leg 
cared for ; and it was claimed by the government, 
at the time of the trial, that Dr. Mudd knew who 
his patient was, and how he came by the broken 
leg; and that, in setting the bone, he practically 
assisted him in his flight. It always seemed to 
me that Dr. Mudd did nothing more than his duty 
as a surgeon, and that his conviction and punish- 
ment were grossly unjust. Dr. Mudd insisted 
that he did not know that he was rendering medi- 
cal assistance to Booth, and that at the time he 
had not heard of the assassination of Lincoln. 
But even supposing that Dr. Mudd did know that 
he was treating the assassin of President Lincoln, 
still, to my thinking, he was doing only his duty 
as a medical man. No physician considers it 
necessary to enquire into the moral character of 
his patient before rendering medical or surgical 
aid. Were I in the practice of medicine I would 
set the broken leg of a thief, a murderer or an 
assassin as conscientiously as I would that of the 
most godly minister of the Gospel. 

I quite approve the conduct of a doctor in a 
southern city who after shooting a burglar who 
had entered his house in the night immediately set 
to work to staunch the flow of blood and save the 
life of the miserable man. There is a curious 
story, the truth of which I do not know, of a phy- 
sician who saved a man who had been hung for 
murder. The supposed dead body was conveyed 
to the physician's office where the resuscitation 
took place. 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 207 

The murderer, assisted by his friends, made 
good his escape, but the doctor was arrested for 
interfering with the execution of the law. The 
jury acquitted him upon the ground that he did 
his duty as a physician. He was under no obli- 
gation to enquire how the patient came to be in 
need of his services; nor was he required by any 
law to assist directly or indirectly the executioner, 
who should have known that the man whose life 
he thought he had taken was not dead. It is 
the duty of the medical man to preserve and not 
to destroy life; when life must be taken, as in 
obstetric cases calling for the sacrifice of the child 
in order to save the mother, the physician kills 
only to preserve a still more valuable life. 
I It was a law in ancient Egypt that the physi- 
cian was to take charge of his patient for the first 
three days at the patient's own risk and cost, 
but if after three days the patient was still sick 
the unfortunate doctor must continue the treat- 
ment without further compensation. It is re- 
corded that on the third day the apprehensive 
doctor was in the habit of prescribing an imme- 
diate journey to the seacoast, the mountains, or 
the springs. The wealthy invalid would close his 
house in Memphis, and engage a camel to con- 
vey him to Faioum in the desert or to Alexandria 
on the Mediterranean. The old law is gone the 
way of all laws, but the Faioum and Alexandria 
of today are spelled "Newport" and "Saratoga." 



208 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Plato said, in his "Republic," "Physicians are 
the only men who may lie at pleasure, since our 
health depends upon the vanity and falsity of 
their promises." Plato was a wise philosopher 
who knew well the medical gentlemen of his day. 
It is not unlikely that some one or more of them 
had posted him off to a well-nigh impossible place 
on the edge of civilization for the benefit of his 
health. If so, he must have improved, for he 
had a soft spot in his heathen heart for the keen- 
sighted disciples of old Father iEsculapius. 
Plato thought a good physician might lie with- 
out guilt if in his opinion a lie was what the pa- 
tient most needed. He would have put lies of 
various kinds into the pharmacopseia, for to him 
they seemed to be a part of the great body of 
Materia Medica. Why swallow a nauseous drug 
when a delicious little sugar-coated lie would do 
just as well? What harm could come of saying, 
"You are very much better than you were yes- 
terday" ? A grain or two of hope might be good 
for a patient even if he were actually in articulo 
mortis. The doctor is engaged to cure the sick 
man, and he must use such remedial agents as 
are adapted to the case. Hope has an immense 
therapeutic value. Why not use it? Dear old 
Plato, you lived before religious casuists quib- 
bled ! You had a warm heart and good red blood 
under your pagan ribs ! So have also the doc- 
tors of the twentieth century. Hope is in the 
pharmacopaeia, and liberal doses (quantum suf- 
ficit) are good for the patient. 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 209 

There is certainly nothing in sickness and 
morbid conditions of either body or mind to at- 
tract the poet's fancy or to allure the lovers 
of beauty. On the contrary, the theory and 
practice of medicine is repellent to the artistic 
temperament, and in some cases actually disgust- 
ing. Yet the poet has not allowed the sad ail- 
ments that our flesh is heir to in this sick and 
sorry world to go wholly uncelebrated. Some 
diseases have been so minutely and circumstan- 
tially described in verse that no one educated in 
medicine could fail of knowing at once the na- 
ture of the disorder. Henry Kirke White, who 
himself died of tuberculosis at the age of 
twenty-one, has left us a "Sonnet to Consump- 
tion" which is greatly admired, and which is here 
reproduced : 

"Gently, most gently, on thy victim's head, 

Consumption, lay thine hand! — let me decay 
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away, 

And softly go to slumber with the dead. 

And if 'tis true what holy men have said, 
That strains angelic oft foretell the day 
Of death to those good men who fall thy prey, 

O let the aerial music round my bed, 

Dissolving sad in dying symphony, 

Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear; 

That I may bid my weeping friends good-by 
Ere I depart upon my journey drear: 

And, smiling faintly on the painful past, 

Compose my decent head, and breathe my last." 

This same English poet wrote the following 
lines on the "Prospect of Death" : 



210 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"On my bed, in wakeful restlessness, 
I turn me wearisome; while all around, 
All, all, save me, sink in f orgetfulness ; 
I only wake to watch the sickly taper 
Which lights me to my tomb. — Yes, 'tis the hand 
Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals, 
Slow sapping the warm current of existence. 
My moments now are few — the sand of life 
Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little, 
And the last fleeting particle will fall, 
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented. 
Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate 
While meditate we may." 

What can be more beautiful than Milton's 
description of his own blindness: 

"Seasons return, but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
So much the rather thou, celestial light, 
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence 
Purge and disperse." 

Shakspeare had venesection or phlebotomy in 
view when he wrote "Love's Labor's Lost": 

"A fever in your blood! Why, then incision 
Would let her out in saucers." 



THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 211 

He had rigor mortis in mind when he wrote in 
"Romeo and Juliet": 

"Alas! she's cold; 
Her blood is settled; and her joints are stiff; 
Life and those lips have long been separated." 

Cowper wrote stanzas which he subjoined 
yearly to the Bill of Mortality of the Parish of 
All Saints for six years. Armstrong, who was 
himself both physician and poet, left the world 
a long and dull poem on "The Art of Preserving 
Health," and in it are a number of subdivisions 
which treat of air, diet, exercise, and the pas- 
sions. He assures us that 

"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, 
Expels diseases, softens every pain, 
Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague; 
And hence the wise of ancient days adored 
One power of physic, melody, and song." 



IX 

SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 



'History preserves only the fleshless bones 
Of what we were; and by the mocking skull 
The would-be wise pretend to guess the features. 
Without the roundness and the glow of life, 
How hideous is the skeleton." 

— Bulwer. 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON has become 
one of the most famous of all the many 
famous towns of England through no en- 
terprise of its citizens and through no attractive- 
ness of surrounding scenery, though, in truth, 
the winding and graceful river and the verdure- 
clad and beautiful hillsides are worth a long jour- 
ney to behold. The world's interest in Stratford 
(and all the world has an increasingly great in- 
terest in that quaint and sleepy little collection 
of old-fashioned houses and streets bare of 
adornment) gathers about and centers in its 
Shakspeare associations. The birth-place, the 
school, and a few other spots closely connected 
with the life of the great dramatist attract every 
year thousands of pilgrims, but the supreme cen- 
ter of absorbing interest is the tomb of the 
Chancel of Holy Trinity. Here as nowhere else 
is entrenched the great Shakspeare-myth that in- 
creases in authority and importance with every 
flying year. Do not for one moment imagine that 
I question, much less that I openly deny, that 
there once lived that "sweet swan of Avon" who 
is described as having "small Latin and less 
Greek," but who, nevertheless, made those im- 
mortal plays that this world of ours will never 
allow to die, and the superb glory of which the 
indefatigable but blind disciples of Bacon will 
215 



216 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

never with all their toil be able to capture for 
their great master. Much or little Latin and 
Greek, he knew English, and wrote "The Mer- 
chant of Venice," "Julius Csesar," "Hamlet," 
and all the rest. In Stratford he lived, and there 
he died, and there also, so far as any man's 
knowledge extends, his bones were entombed be- 
neath those four lines of astonishing doggerel 
that every school-boy knows by heart. For what 
may be called the "Bacon Theory" I never enter- 
tained even the most remote regard. I protect 
my use of the term "Shakspeare-myth" by a 
frank avowal of my entire want of sympathy with 
those who are endeavoring to deprive Shakspeare 
of the unique glory which will always remain his 
alone. A myth is not necessarily a fiction nor a 
mere creation of the imagination. It may be a 
fanciful narrative or a collection of such narra- 
tives in some measure founded upon real events, 
and, perhaps, so interwoven with those events as 
to make anything like historical criticism impos- 
sible. The real Shakspeare and the myth are 
now one. Of course I do not subscribe to the 
clodhopper theory that represents the noblest 
literature in our English language as having 
bubbled up from the uninstructed brain of a 
country bumpkin. It is admitted that Shaks- 
peare was not a profound scholar. He was far 
from being possessed of Bacon's erudition; he 
had not Milton's Latin; and I doubt if he knew 
a word of Greek. No one denies he laid violent 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 217 

hands upon the literary property of other men. 
Whatever he wanted, play, narrative, or poem, he 
appropriated without troubling himself to give 
the pillaged author credit. But it is also true 
that whatever he touched he beautified ; and much 
that was worthless as he found it became pure 
gold in the transmuting fires of his genius. 

Great writers live no small part of their time 
upon the thin edge of the grossest plagiarism, 
and yet whatever they appropriate they make 
their own, giving it a spirit and a new beauty 
of which the original author never dreamed. 
Goethe was full of Shakspeare. Iago and Ham- 
let were borrowed almost bodily. Marguerite is 
Ophelia in well-nigh every detail. Both women 
came from humble life, and were wooed by men 
of superior social standing. Marguerite was be- 
trayed, and there are reasons for suspecting that 
Ophelia was seduced. Ophelia's mad-song re- 
appears in Faust. To both women Fate appor- 
tioned madness and death. Compare the Witch's 
Kitchen with the Witch Scene in "Macbeth." 
Can one read the "Walpurgis Night" and not be 
reminded of the "Midsummer Night's Dream"? 
Goethe was scarcely less indebted to Marlowe and 
Calderon. The famous Prologue in Heaven is 
surely taken from the Book of Job. It was 
charged against Bunyan that he made his "Pil- 
grim's Progress" out of Caxton's "Pilgrimage of 
the Soul" and Bernard's "Isle of Man." The 
charge of literary dishonesty was brought for- 



218 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

ward during Bunyan's life, for there are pre- 
served four lines from his pen in which he repels 
the charge. Moliere derived his plots, his dia- 
logues, and even whole scenes, from Italian come- 
dies. It may be the larger fish in the sea of life 
and letters have a right to subsist upon the small 
fry, and yet the doctrine is dangerous that one 
may steal with impunity what he puts to good 
use. 

Were we living in Stratford, and so fortunate 
as to own a corner lot or two in that sleepy old 
town, we would most certainly resist every move- 
ment looking toward the opening of Shakspeare's 
tomb. Were we so highly honored as to be the 
vicar, or an influential member of the corpora- 
tion of Holy Trinity, nothing could be too bad 
for us to say about poor little Delia Bacon, who 
thought to bribe the sexton and work her way 
under cover of night like a grave-robber into the 
famous vault. But we frankly confess that our 
watch-dog proclivities could hardly be called al- 
truistic, for the opening of that tomb would 
mean the bursting of one of the most profitable 
of financial bubbles. Stratford is the outer crust 
over an inner core of Shakspeare-myth. To dis- 
credit the myth would be to put Holy Trinity out 
of business, close the twenty or more souvenir and 
relic shops that every year entice from literary 
pilgrims and more vulgar excursionists their 
nimble shillings, and render the Red Horse, the 
Falcon, and whatever other hostelries have hung 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 219 

out their signboards, the prey of the rapacious 
auctioneer. It may be the Red Horse could sub- 
sist for a time upon the bones of Washington 
Irving, if they are not already picked too clean, 
but the glory of its uncomfortable rooms and in- 
digestible dinners would be gone. 

More than forty thousand sixpences were paid 
in one year (1906) for the privilege of seeing 
Shakspeare's birthplace, and this was but a single 
item in the revenue brought in by the famous 
Shakspeare-myth. Nearly every visitor gives an- 
other sixpence to enter the museum. Still an- 
other sixpence is required for admission to the 
Memorial Theatre. Every one goes to Anne 
Hathaway's house, and you must give at least a 
sixpence to the custodian. The sixpenny fees 
alone in Stratford-on-Avon seldom come to less 
for the year than twenty thousand dollars. Mr. 
Fitzgerald, in The Munsey for September, 1907, 
has this to say: 

"As Irving said, at Stratford the traveler's mind 
'refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected 
with Shakspeare'; and the town practically lives 
upon the cult. Shakspeare is its trade-mark, so to 
speak. There is a Shakspeare Hotel, with rooms 
named after the plays; there are Shakspeare tea- 
rooms; Shakspeare busts meet us at every turn; not 
to speak of picture post-cards, plates and cups, 
handkerchiefs, colored models of the birthplace, 
and a thousand odds and ends more or less remotely 
connected with the poet's name and fame. 

New Place, where Shakspeare spent his last 
years, was long ago demolished, but the conscien- 



220 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tious pilgrim must pay sixpence to see the site of 
the mansion and a mulberry-tree said to be a scion 
of the one that the poet planted with his own hand. 
The original tree was cut down in 1756 by a tenant 
who disliked the importunities of visitors; but to 
this day men come to you on the streets of Strat- 
ford and offer you, in mysterious whispers, pipes, 
brooches, and toys made out of the last remaining 
fragments of its wood. 

Scattered through the surrounding country are 
subsidiary shrines. More famous than many a 
royal palace is the long, low cottage where dwelt 
Anne Hathaway, in the village of Shottery^ a mile 
from Stratford. The visitor may tread today the 
very footpath through the fields along which, no 
doubt, the lad Shakspeare often hurried to court 
his sweetheart; and for a fee, he may enter the cot- 
tage and inspect its relics. Then there is another 
fee for the cottage at Wilmcote where Mary Arden 
— Shakspeare's mother — was born; and you must 
pay for a carriage and guide to Charlecote, the 
ancient home of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom the poet 
satirized as 'Justice Shallow/ " 

There can be little doubt that the tomb of 
Shakspeare has been opened more than once. 
The doggerel over the vault could hardly restrain 
the curiosity of an entire world, and there is not 
the slightest evidence that those crude lines were 
the work of the great poet. It is more than likely 
the limping and absurd lines were cut into the 
stone by direction of some member of the family 
who feared that in time the bones beneath might 
be hustled out of their resting place and tossed 
into the charnel house which at that day adjoined 
the chancel of the church. Only the graves of 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 221 

kings, nobles, and great generals were safe. 
Common bones had no value and received little 
consideration. It is so in some measure even now. 
Nothing prevents the running of a street over 
the dust of Joseph Rodman Drake but periodical 
outbursts of popular wrath. The Roman authori- 
ties chafe under restraints that prevent them 
from digging up the dust of Keats and the 
"flame-proof heart" of Shelley in the old Prot- 
estant Cemetery at Rome to make way for a 
smart new avenue which they are quite sure would 
be a greater glory to the immortal city than two 
scarcely ornamental gravestones. Not long ago a 
section of the wall of the cemetery was taken 
down to provide room for a street. The British 
Embassy at Rome must every two or three years 
interfere and head off the intended vandalism. 
Once Queen Victoria herself had to bring to bear 
the power of her personal influence. The bones 
of Schiller were tumbled into a public vault, 
whence they were recovered with difficulty and 
uncertainty. We all know what happened in the 
Chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate, in 1679, if 
Aubrey's account of the violation of the tomb 
of Milton is to be trusted. Shakspeare was only 
a poet, and when he died the world cared little for 
his memory, and if possible even less for the 
preservation of his tomb. He was simply Mr. 
Shakspeare of Stratford-on-Avon, a good actor 
and a successful play-writer. There was the best 
of reasons for carving over the poet's tomb that 



Z22 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

rude curse. It was a device intended to keep his 
bones out of the charnel house. Of course all 
this is based upon the assumption that his body 
was really placed beneath the stone upon which is 
inscribed the far-famed curse. There have been 
those who questioned the fact. The stone itself 
records no name, and the lines are quite unworthy 
of the poet. But one way or the other, those 
lines were intended to protect whatever body was 
deposited beneath them. Conceding that they 
have accomplished the end for which they were 
composed and carved upon the stone, still there 
is absolutely no reason for believing that they 
have for about three hundred years prevented 
the opening of that tomb. 

Mr. Donnelly introduces a remarkable ex- 
planation of the lines over the tomb. He thinks 
that Shakspeare requested Bacon to write an in- 
scription for his tombstone that would prevent 
his bones from being cast out when the discov- 
ery of the Cipher should be made. As Donnelly 
thinks that Bacon introduced the Cipher, and as 
he also thinks Ben Jonson conveyed to Shaks- 
peare intelligence of its presence in the Plays, so 
he naturally credits Bacon with the doggerel in- 
scription. The author of this paper does not re- 
gard Mr. Donnelly's Cipher-theory as in any way 
worthy of study or discussion, but any investi- 
gator who may wish to look into the matter for 
himself can find Mr. Donnelly's views fully ex- 
pounded in his book, "The Great Cryptogram," 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 

published in 1888. The first part of the book is 
an interesting study of the Plays and will repay 
a careful reading, but the second part, which is 
taken up with the Cipher, discredits the entire 
work. Mr. Donnelly calls attention to the dis- 
covery in the Bodleian Library of a letter from 
a certain William Hall addressed to Edward 
Thwaites, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, in which it 
is stated that Shakspeare ordered the four lines 
of doggerel cut on the tombstone during his life- 
time, and that he wished to be buried "full seven- 
teen feet deep." It is understood that Halliwell- 
Phillipps pronounces the letter genuine. It was 
probably written in 1694. The "seventeen feet 
deep" of course only renders the possibility of 
finding any Shakspeare remains still more remote. 
Some time ago Mr. James Hare published in a 
Birmingham paper an account of a remarkable 
visit he made to Shakspeare's tomb. Mr. Hare 
said that in 1827 he went to Stratford with a 
friend and "on visiting the poet's tomb found the 
vault adjoining it open, probably for the recep- 
tion of a body." These are his words : 

"We got into the adjoining vault and stood npon 
a board. While there we looked through an open- 
ing in the wall that separated Shakspeare's tomb 
from the one in which we were standing, and we 
could see nothing in it but a slight elevation of 
mouldering dust on its level floor, and the smallness 
of the quantity surprised me. No trace or appear- 
ance of a coffin or of undecomposed bones, and cer- 
tainly no such elevation as a skull would occasion 



2U EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

was observed. The impression produced by what 
we saw was that the remains had been enclosed in 
an ordinary wooden coffin and simply laid on the 
floor of the vault, which may have been of earth, 
though of that we could determine nothing. If a 
leaden casket had been used, it would have been 
present in some form or other, or had an amount 
of earth been dug out to bury it below the surface, 
a depression would have been the natural conse- 
quence, and the elevation could not then be ac- 
counted for." 

I would attach no undue importance to Mr. 
Hare's communication, which at the time of its 
publication attracted some attention. I merely 
insist that there is no good reason for thinking 
that the Shakspeare vault has remained unex- 
plored during all the time it has been a center of 
world-wide interest. The fact that there is no 
authentic account of such exploration signed by 
suitable witnesses, favors rather than opposes the 
opinion advanced. Any person who should open 
that tomb and find it empty, and who should have 
the temerity to publish that most unwelcome fact 
to an indignant world, would find himself counted 
forever among the enemies of mankind. The 
Rev. Francis Gastrell, who cut down the Shaks- 
peare mulberry-tree, and the classically inclined 
Malone, who painted the decorated bust of the 
poet in the chancel a snowy white, are both of 
them pilloried. It is hard to say what might be- 
come of the man who should break into the tomb 
and find it empty; for his offense the pillory 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 225 

would seem to be too mild an instrument of ven- 
geance. 

Of course there are those, and they are largely 
in the majority, who hold to a very different 
opinion. It is only fair that these should have a 
hearing, though, in truth, they have never been 
backward about helping themselves to what 
seems to be something more than a just share of 
public attention. Mr. J. Parker Norris some 
time ago relieved his mind in the Manhattan 
Magazine, He believes that Shakspeare was en- 
tombed in an hermetically-sealed coffin and that it 
is more than likely the poet's body is even now 
in a state of perfect preservation. These are his 
words : 

"Shakspeare was buried under the chancel of 
the Church of Holy Trinity at Stratford-upon- 
Avon, alongside of the graves of his wife, his 
daughter Susanna Hall, John Hall her husband, 
and Thomas Nash the husband of Elizabeth, who 
was the daughter of John and Susanna Hall. 
These graves lie side by side, and stretch across the 
chancel of the church immediately in front of the 
rail separating the altar from the remainder of the 
chancel. 

The situation of these graves shows that Shak- 
speare and his family were persons of importance 
in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and makes it 
very probable that the poet was buried in an her- 
metically-sealed leaden coffin. Such coffins were 
commonly used in those days for those whose rela- 
tions could afford them. If this conjecture be true, 
the remains will certainly be found in a much bet- 
ter state of preservation than they would be in 



226 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

were a mere wooden coffin alone employed, although 
even in the latter case, we must not despair of find- 
ing much that would be of utmost value in deter- 
mining Shakspeare's personal appearance. 

Not many years ago some graves of those who 
were buried about the same time that Shakspeare 
was entombed were opened at Church Lawford, in 
England, and the faces, figures, and even the very 
dresses of their occupants were found to be quite 
perfect. Half an hour after the admission of air 
they became heaps of dust. A long enough period 
elapsed, however, to enable a photographer to 
make successful pictures of them, had any suitable 
preparations been thought of. 

Think of a photograph of Shakspeare 'in his 
habit as he lived.' Would not such a relic be of in- 
estimable value to the world, and what would not 
be given for such a treasure?" 

Does anyone in his sober senses, who has given 
the matter an hour's serious and intelligent con- 
sideration, believe that the body of Shakspeare 
could lie unexamined in a tomb where it must 
sooner or later disintegrate, and that it could 
remain in that tomb unexamined three hundred 
years, during most of which time the entire civi- 
lized world was so anxious to know all about the 
poet that an essayist could feel himself justified 
in exclaiming, "Think of a photograph of 
Shakspeare 'in his habit as he lived.' Would not 
such a relic be of inestimable value to the world, 
and what would not be given for such a treas- 
ure?" 

"What would not be given?" — well, most any- 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 227 

thing would be given, including permission to 
open the tomb and make the coveted pictures. 
No such price as the opening of the tomb has, 
according to the Stratford authorities, ever been 
paid, nor do we believe that the aforesaid author- 
ities will ever incline to the payment of such a 
price. The reason is not far to see. Before you 
photograph a man, you must make certain of his 
presence. The positive assurance that the tomb 
in Holy Trinity is at the present moment the 
actual guardian of the poet's bones, that those 
bones had been seen by competent witnesses, and 
that accurate photographs of them had been 
made and could be viewed by all who were in- 
clined to examine them, would, even were the 
bones in a partly disintegrated condition, increase 
rather than diminish the importance of Stratford 
in general and of Holy Trinity in particular. 
The entire civilized world would be interested in 
such an assurance. Still the vault remains, ac- 
cording to the custodians, unopened. Do I be- 
lieve that it has never been opened? Good 
reader, I believe nothing of the kind. I think I 
see in the reluctance to open that tomb very good 
evidence that it has been opened, and that those 
who have the largest personal interest in the mat- 
ter are satisfied that the public opening of what 
is known as the Shakspeare tomb would have a 
disastrous effect upon the Shakspeare-myth, and 
upon Stratford revenues. 

No other tomb, so far as I know, has ever re- 



EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

sisted the pressure that has been brought to bear 
upon the vault in Holy Trinity. Men have ex- 
plored the mummy-pits of Egypt, and it is 
believed by those who are competent to form an 
opinion in the matter that the veritable body of 
Cleopatra now rests in a glass case in the British 
Museum. Men have digged in the tombs of 
Agamemnon, Kassandra and Eurymedon, and in 
the very dust of Achilles and Ajax. The dis- 
covery of the relics of Theseus has been reported. 
The tomb of the Scipios has been opened. Even 
the sacred relics of the Buddha have been 
brought to light, and are now reverently pre- 
served by the followers of his faith. To come 
down to later times, the tombs of Charles Mart el, 
Charlemagne, Frederick II. of Germany, Queen 
Elizabeth, Charles I. of England, Tycho Brahe, 
Raphael, Emanuel Swedenborg, and George 
Washington have been opened. Is the tomb of 
the Bard-of-Avon more sacred than all these 
tombs? How are we to account for the fact that 
the vault in Stratford has resisted and still re- 
sists greater pressure than was necessary to open 
all these and many other tombs in every part of 
the world? There can be, so it seems to me, but 
one answer — the Shakspeare tomb has not re- 
sisted the pressure, but has been opened and 
thoroughly explored. Why, then, have we no 
authentic account of such opening? My dear 
reader, ask the vicar of Holy Trinity and the 
custodians of the tomb that question. 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 229 

Mr. Norris is persuaded that the body of 
Shakspeare was buried in an hermetically-sealed 
leaden coffin. What reason has he for such a 
persuasion? He tells us it was customary to bury 
persons of distinction in such coffins when their 
friends were able to meet the increased expense. 
But there is nothing to indicate that Shaks- 
peare's relatives would be likely to indulge the 
dead body in any luxury of the kind, and we have 
no account of any provision made by the poet 
himself for so expensive an interment. A leaden 
coffin would certainly have rendered the body rea- 
sonably safe, but the very fact that the family 
cut those doggerel lines over the vault to prevent 
desecration inclines us to believe that no one knew 
anything about a leaden coffin. Such a coffin 
would have made the disagreeable epigraphic 
curse wholly unnecessary. 

Why should the Shakspeare family bury the 
leaden coffin? Vaults are usually supposed to do 
away with the necessity for earth-burial. The 
cases are rare in which the floor of a vault has 
been dug up in order to inhume a coffin of any 
kind. No, reader, there was neither leaden cof- 
fin nor earth-burial. If the body of Shakspeare 
was ever placed in that vault, it was placed there 
incased in a wooden coffin and that coffin rested 
upon the floor of the vault, which may have been 
of stone, cement, or common earth. There is 
an old tradition that cannot be traced back of 
1693, that Shakspeare's wife and daughter de- 



230 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

sired to be laid in the same grave with the poet, 
but that "not one, for fear of the curse above 
said, dare touch his gravestone." The tradition 
is nothing more than a tradition, but it shows us 
something of the power of superstition in an age 
of great ignorance, and it helps us to see how 
those four lines may have prevented Shakspeare's 
bones from being thrown into the charnel-house; 
but that the rude curse had any terror for en- 
lightened antiquaries, or that it now renders the 
opening of the vault difficult, it would be folly 
to assert. Curses of the kind were not uncom- 
mon. Many tombs have been opened in the face 
of even more ferocious imprecations. The old 
Romans were in the habit of denouncing upon the 
stones over their dead whoever should dare to dis- 
turb the bones beneath. By the Aurelian gate 
was the following inscription belonging to the 
Pagan period: 

C. TVLIVS. C. L. 

BARNAEVS 

OLLA. EJVS. SI. QVI 

OV VIOLARIT. AD 

INFEROS. NON RECIPIATVR. 

C. Tullius Barnaeus. If any one violate this urn, 
let him not be received into the Infernal Regions 
(i. e., Elysium). 

Maitland has recorded one to the same import 
among the Christian remains in the Lapidarian 
Gallery : 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 231 

MALE. PEREAT. INSEPVLTVS 

IACEAT. NON. RESVRGAT 

CVM. IVDA. PARTEM. HABEAT 

SI QVIS. SEPVLCHRVM. HVNC 

VIOLAVERIT. 

If any one violate this Sepulchre, let him perish 
miserably, lie unburied, and not arise, but have his 
lot with Judas.* 

Here is a Greek inscription: 

"I summon to the guardianship of this tomb the 
lower Gods, Pluto, Demeter, Persephone, and all 
the others. If any one despoils it, opens it, or in 
any way disturbs it, by himself or an agent, may 
his journey on land be obstructed, on the sea may 
he be tempest-tossed and thoroughly baffled and 
driven about in every way. May he suffer every 
ill, chills and fevers, remittent and intermittent, 
and the most repulsive skin diseases. Whatever is 
injurious and disturbing in life may it fall on him 
that dares remove anything from this tomb." 

The following is from the Phoenician of Es- 
munazar, King of the Two Sidons: t 

"I have departed hence, 
And am no more forever. 
Like the day I vanished, 
Hath my spirit faded from the world, 
And my voice 
Ceased from sounding in the ears of men. 

Hush! Here sleeps a king, 

Encomned in the tomb 

He builded with his wealth; 



*Petegrew: "Collection of Epitaphs, p. 194. 
tMarvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 119. 



232 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Bequeathing unto whomsoever 

Shall move his bones, 

Or dig for treasure in his mould'ring dust, 

A curse that shall continue, 

And consume his race: 

To him and his be there no rest for evermore, 

Nor fruit of any toil; 

Let him, when dead, lie rotting on the field, 

His bones the prey of jackals. 

I have departed hence, 
To dwell no more with men; 
And, like the day I vanished, 
Hath my spirit faded into nothingness: 
Farewell." 

What is the upshot of the whole matter? This: 
The body of Shakspeare, if it was ever deposited 
beneath the stone that does not bear the poet's 
name and that is defaced by four lines of con- 
summate doggerel, was there deposited in an or- 
dinary wooden coffin which was left resting upon 
the floor of the vault, and which in due time crum- 
bled away. The last vestige of the person of 
Shakspeare has, I doubt not, returned to earth. 
There is one other possibility painful to contem- 
plate, and which need not detain us here. Hun- 
dreds of graves in England and elsewhere have 
been pillaged. There have been, and there are 
today, many persons who would be glad to open 
the tomb of Shakspeare by stealth, no other way 
being possible. There are even those who would 
be glad to plunder it for gain. But no one who 
should succeed in entering that vault would care 



SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 233 

to report himself, unless he had found something 
to justify in the eyes of the world his audacity, 
and it may be, sacrilege. What discovery could 
justify his act in the eyes of Stratford and Holy 
Trinity? No discovery of any kind, and cer- 
tainly not the discovery of nothing at all. 

It has been suggested that the word "moves" in 
the famous curse over what is believed to be the 
Shakspeare vault, should be understood as having 
the sense of removes, and if I am right in think- 
ing that the inscription was intended only to pre- 
vent the bones from being cast into the charnel- 
house, then certainly no malediction, stated or im- 
plied, stands in the way of a thorough examina- 
tion of the tomb and its contents, should any con- 
tents be discovered. Of course, as has been said, 
there is uncertainty with regard to the exact lo- 
cation of Shakspeare's last resting place. Less 
than a century ago the slab over the vault, hav- 
ing sunk so as to be somewhat below the level of 
the pavement, was removed, and another stone 
was substituted. Shakspeare's name was not upon 
the original stone, nor is it cut into the stone that 
replaces it, though the lines appear upon both 
slabs. There is no absolute certainty that the 
new stone was placed in exactly the position pre- 
viously occupied by the old one. Still there could 
be little difficulty in finding the remains, suppos- 
ing them to be in existence, for one way or the 
other, the body of Shakspeare must have been de- 
posited near the present stone which, in all proba- 
bility, covers at least a portion of the vault. 



234 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

The Stratford authorities cannot plead the use- 
lessness of an examination of the Shakspeare 
tomb as an excuse for their refusal to permit such 
examination, for the recovery of the skull would 
set at rest various questions that have for a long 
time disturbed the minds of students and critics. 
It would determine the value of the Bust, the 
Kesselstadt Death-Mask, the Droeshout engrav- 
ing, the Janssen portrait on wood in the collection 
of the Duke of Somerset, the Chandos portrait, 
the Croker portrait, the Hunt picture at the 
Birthplace, and a number of other representations 
of one kind or another. 

There are many and good reasons why the 
tomb should be opened, at least from the anti- 
quarian's point of view, but never will the Strat- 
ford authorities give consent. It would mean, 
as has been shown, the collapse of a Shakspeare- 
myth, involving the fortunes of Holy Trinity and 
the prosperity and importance of Stratford-upon- 
Avon. 



X 

HOLOGRAPHS 



"O most gracious and worshipful Lord God, 
wonderful in Thy providence, I return all possible 
thanks to Thee for the care Thou hast always 
taken of me. I continually meet with signal in- 
stances of this Thy providence, and one act yester- 
day, when I unexpectedly met with three old MSS., 
for which, in a particular manner, I return my 
thanks, beseeching Thee to continue the same pro- 
tection to me a poor helpless sinner, and that for 
Jesus Christ his sake." 

— Prayer of Thomas Hearne the Antiquary. 



HOLOGRAPHS 

NOTHING connected with the life of a 
great man is, strictly speaking, private. 
My humble neighbor's fireside is his own, and 
of it no man may despoil him; but Shakspeare 
has no fireside that may not be invaded. Who- 
ever will, may enquire into the dramatist's do- 
mestic and other affairs without the remotest 
approach to indelicacy of any kind. The great 
man is something more than a man ; he is so much 
of the world as he has enriched, and the age in 
which he lived lives and will always live in him. 
Browning's son has been censured for publishing 
certain letters that passed between his father and 
mother before their marriage ; but those who cen- 
sure him forget the greatness of the two poets, 
who, because of that greatness, belong to the en- 
tire world. A dealer may vend those letters if he 
will, and who will pay for them may have them 
with wrong to no man. A late decision of the Court 
of Appeal in England declares the right to pub- 
lish certain letters of Charles Lamb to reside with 
their present possessor. By inference, at least, 
the decision gives the receiver of letters the right 
to publish such letters without the consent of the 
writer or of his executor or other legal repre- 
sentative should he be no longer living. The de- 
cision, so far as it affects the unpublished letters 
of men and women in no way connected with pub- 
237 



238 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

lie life, may be wrong, but it only recognizes a 
fact already established and acted upon, that the 
letters of distinguished persons belong in a cer- 
tain sense to all the world, and the collector may 
be said to hold them in trust. When the library 
of the late William Andrews, who wrote so many 
valuable books on antiquarian subjects, was cata- 
logued for public sale, it was found that more 
than half of the books to be offered by the auc- 
tioneer had been enriched by the insertion of one 
or more letters written by authors. The owner 
of a valuable letter may have a legal right to 
destroy it, but no man could have an ethical 
right to drop a letter written by Shakspeare, were 
he so fortunate as to possess such a treasure, into 
the fire, nor could he, without wronging his fel- 
low men, deliberately destroy an epistle addressed 
by Abelard to Heloise or one written by either 
Vittoria Colonna or Michael Angelo. Private 
ownership can never extinguish the world's inter- 
est in its great men and in such treasures as 
closely connect themselves with the sons and 
daughters of genius. The Italian government 
will not permit the owner of a celebrated picture 
or statue to sell the work of art to one who in- 
tends to remove it from the country. Egypt has 
so absolutely and unconditionally forbidden the 
exposing of her antiquities for sale that the large 
and famous museums of the world find it hard to 
obtain even the ordinary remains of ancient times 
that one expects to find in extensive collections of 
antiquities. 



HOLOGRAPHS 239 

I never called myself an autograph collector, 
but my fondness for books and my great interest 
in the literary life, as well as my large acquaint- 
ance with men and women who "drive the quill," 
have resulted in a library table drawer full of 
letters, documents, and mementos that have 
yielded a large return in the purest intellectual 
satisfaction. Many delightful evenings have been 
passed in fellowship and communion with those 
creased and time-worn treasures. I am sure they 
have not made me selfish, for I am ready at all 
times to unlock that treasure-house of delight for 
the gladness and satisfaction of others. 

Here we have a letter from Joel Barlow ad- 
dressed to his friend John Fellows, who was in 
his day and generation an author of some note, 
though few in these later times know very much 
about him. So fades the glory of this world. 
He was a wise man who described fame as a 
flower upon the bosom Death. To most of us 
Fellows is now little more than a name in a bio- 
graphical dictionary, if indeed he is even that. 
Barlow was a Congregational clergyman and a 
chaplain in the American army. Later, when the 
world, if not the flesh and the devil, had com- 
passed him about, and grasped him tight, he 
was admitted to the bar. Then as now the law 
led on to political preferment, and so it came to 
pass that our author became consul in Algiers, 
He was also minister plenipotentiary to the 
French Government, and in the autumn of 1812 



240 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

he received an invitation to a conference with 
Napoleon at Wilnar in Poland. He died before 
the meeting with the Emperor. Our interest in 
Barlow centers in none of his public achieve- 
ments and honors, but in his literary work. He 
wrote "Hasty Pudding" and "The Columbiad," 
both of which are conspicuous among early con- 
tributions to American literature. Few who 
think of him as a preacher of the Gospel and a 
compiler of one of our New England hymn-books 
know that he forsook the faith of his early days 
and became a warm personal friend and disciple 
of Thomas Paine. The following letter will 
show how far he wandered from the religious be- 
lief in which he was educated and which he once 
preached. Here, so far as I know, this letter 
finds itself in cold print for the first time: 

Hamburg, May 23rd, 1795. 
To John Fellows, 

New York. 
Dear Sir: 

I received a few weeks ago by Capt. Jenkins 
your favor of the 12th March, with the bundle of 
pamphlets and books. This being the first copy I 
have seen of the New York Edition of the "Ad- 
vice." I am mortified to find it so full of errors. 
It is enough for me to answer for my own non- 
sense without having an additional quantity forged 
by the Printers. I now send you a corrected Edi- 
tion of the Four Political Pieces, which I wish 
you to publish in the order in which I place them, 
with the title I have just put to the whole. I do 
this because you mention your intention of publish- 



HOLOGRAPHS 241 

ing a new edition, which I hope you have not done 
before this arrives as I am very anxious you should 
make use of this corrected edition. 

You will observe that in this edition no notice 
is taken of First and Second parts in the "Advice," 
nor of the remaining three chapters which it was 
my intention to write, but which my other occupa- 
tions have prevented me from writing. As to the 
title of the "Advice," I always felt it to be an un- 
fortunate one, but it is now too late to remedy the 
matter. It must take its fate in the world in its 
present form. But you can in the advertisements 
mention the subjects of the different chapters. 

I think it will continue to be a book of a steady, 
slow sale, but I never expected it to be rapid. 

As to the little poem I sent to Carey, I care noth- 
ing about it. If it should come to you, you may 
publish it, but without the Dedication. I don't 
know Mr. Carey; but a man of common civility 
would at least have answered my letter, which he 
has not done. 

I have seen sometime ago N. W.'s criticisms on 
the "Advice." It is no more than what I might ex- 
pect. I have no doubt of his friendship for me. 
His intentions are much better than his arguments. 
I had seen before what he wrote on the French 
Revolution, — a thing he knows nothing about. He 
took his text, I suppose, from an English minister- 
ial paper where a decree was made for the Con- 
vention that "Death is an Eternal Sleep" — a de- 
cree which the Convention certainly never heard of 
unless they may have read it in an English paper 
or in Mr. Webster's book. It is in this manner that 
the people of Europe have been perpetually misin- 
formed with respect to the affairs of France, and 
it is not strange that the people of America should 
share in this imposition so long as you find grave 
historians who will sit down in their closets in New 



242 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

York and give them the French Revolution from 
the mouths of their enemies. 

I am sorry to find such a slavish spirit of aris- 
tocracy as is manifest in America. It is what I 
foresaw from the beginning of the Funding System, 
and it might have been known to be the object of 
its authors by those who knew the men. But I 
likewise see a retrograde march in this phalanx of 
little despots. It is impossible for them to with- 
stand the great current of opinion that will set the 
other way with a vast accumulation of force as soon 
as the French Revolution shall be understood, and 
especially when a like change of government shall 
take place in England, which is an event as irresist- 
ible as the march of Time. We have many good 
things in American character, but it does not sig- 
nify for us to deny that on subjects in general we 
are the apes of European opinions. We receive 
some of these opinions from France, but most of 
them come from England, and when good opinions 
shall prevail there, there will be no danger of our 
own. 

I rejoice at the progress of good sense over the 
damnable imposture of Christian mummery. I had 
no doubt of the effect of Paine's 'Age of Reason." 
It must be cavilled at awhile, but it must prevail. 
Though things as good have been often said, they 
never were said in as good a way. I am glad to 
see a translation, and so good a one, of Boulanger's 
"Christianisme Devoile." It is remarkably correct 
and elegant. I have not had time to compare the 
whole of the translation with the original, but so 
far as I have compared it I never saw a better one. 
Some few mistakes indeed I have noticed which 
appear to be the effect of haste. I have not at this 
moment the translation by me, or I would point 
them out to you for correction in another edition. 
I wish Mr. Johnson would go on and give us the 



HOLOGRAPHS 243 

next volume — the history of that famous mounte- 
bank called St. Paul. I should think these two books 
would give such a currency to the author in Amer- 
ica that the translator might be encouraged to go on 
and complete his whole works, especially "L'An- 
tiquite Devoile," and his "Oriental Despotism." I 
do not know that these books have been translated, 
but if they have, they are probably not rendered so 
well as this translator would render them. 

I need not request your particular attention to 
the press in this new edition of my works. I ob- 
serve with pleasure in the "Letter to the Piedmon- 
tese" there are only two slight mistakes (page 40) 
and I will not swear that these were not in the 
copy. 

You need not send me any more after you get 
this, as I shall, I hope, be with you before winter. 

I wish you would not suffer a word of this letter 
to go into a newspaper. 

With thanks for the agreeable presents you sent 
me, I salute you with fraternal affection. 

Joel Barlow. 

Apropos of Barlow's religious defection, Dr. 
Moncure D. Conway told me the sad story of the 
spiritual unrest and final rejection of Christianity 
as a divinely revealed system of faith by Sarah 
Flower Adams. Mrs. Adams was, it will be re- 
membered, the author of the lovely hymn, 
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" — a hynm that can 
never become obsolete. The "South Place Hymn 
Book" (published in 1841) was largely the work 
of the Rev. W. J. Fox, who was the pastor of the 
South Place Chapel, and his gifted parishioner, 
Sarah Flower Adams. The congregation wor- 



244 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

shipping in the chapel was at first liberal Uni- 
tarian, but under the ministry of Mr. Fox it be- 
came rationalistic, and Dr. Conway's preaching 
greatly increased the liberal sentiment for which 
it now stands. The hymn "Nearer, My God, to 
Thee" was printed first in the book above named 
and it is hard to believe, what is beyond all doubt 
true, that the beautiful hymn, a portion of which 
President McKinley repeated most devoutly upon 
his deathbed, was written by one who had aban- 
doned belief in revealed religion. 

In one's mental attitude toward Thomas Paine 
it is right to keep in view the fact that public 
opinion of the man and his work was largely 
formed by the avowed opponents of Paine, some 
of whom hesitated at nothing that could do him 
harm. I cannot think the author of "The 
Age of Reason" was all that his biographer 
represents him to have been, but he had his vir- 
tues, and some of his deeds were noble and wor- 
thy of remembrance. The discussion of Barlow's 
letter with Conway led the latter to address me 
the following note which I took, some time ago, 
from the little drawer in my library table and 
fastened into the second volume of Conway's 
"Life of Thomas Paine," where whoever pur- 
chases the book will find it when the auctioneer 
deals with my estate: 

Dear Sir: 

Thank you for your "Christ Among the Cattle." 
It was the much-abused "Tom Paine" who began 



HOLOGRAPHS 245 

in this country the protest against cruelty to ani- 
mals, in the Pennsylvania Magazine, which he 
edited (May, 1775). In his "Age of Reason" 
Paine declared: 

"The moral duty of man consists in imitating the 
moral goodness and beneficence of God in the crea- 
tion towards all His creatures. Seeing, as we do, the 
goodness of God to all men, we have an example 
calling upon all men to practice the same toward 
each, and consequently everything of persecution 
and revenge between man and man, and everything 
of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty." 

This I mention simply because I think it may in- 
terest you. And for the same reason I will call 
your attention (though you may have seen it) to 
the papyrus discovered in Egypt (1904) by the Ox- 
ford explorers, Rev. Drs. Grenfell and Hunt, con- 
taining a lost saying of Jesus. The parentheses of 
the discoverers are conjectural and I think one of 
them is erroneous, but there is no doubt about the 
authenticity of the papyrus (much mutilated) : 

Jesus said, ' (Ye ask who are these) that draw 
us (to the kingdom, if) the kingdom is in heaven? 
The birds of the air and all beasts that are under 
the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the 
sea, (these are they which draw) you, and the king- 
dom of heaven is within you; and whoever shall 
know himself shall find it." 

In the course of my fifty years of ministry I 
have dealt much with the subject that interests 
you so greatly. It is complicated by the contention 
of the scientific defenders of vivisection that de- 
struction of animals to obtain knowledge — food for 
the mind — is more moral than destruction for bod- 
ily food. And many point out that in attacking 
those who destroy animals for ornament we strain 
at the gnat while swallowing the camel of cruel 
hunting (of which President Roosevelt is so fond, 



246 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

— just now slaughtering happy creatures of earth 
and air in Virginia, while sending Root here to de- 
nounce the wickedness of Hearst in his name!). 

The sportsman — in all the world the chief of- 
fender — has inherited his killing propensity from 
his four-footed ancestors who hunt their prey, and 
we can hardly hope to civilize him. A more serious 
difficulty is our European and American inheritance 
of the carniverous habit. It is, generally speaking, 
impossible to exist without the butcher shop. I 
have known two or three successful vegetarians, 
but most of these succumbed at their first serious 
illness. A lovely maiden of my London chapel died 
of that experiment, and another is now a skeleton 
doomed to die soon because, though conscious of the 
mistake, she cannot take flesh on her stomach. I 
sometimes fear that I was too emotional and too in- 
cautious in preaching about 'our poor relations, the 
animals/ 

I sympathize deeply with the spirit of your im- 
pressive discourse, and especially with what you 
say of the destruction of bird-life for fashionable 
ornamentation, for that may touch the heart of 
woman. And I see little hope for true reformation 
in any direction except where the woman is hiding 
her leaven in the measure of our coarse masculine 
meal. 

Cordially, 

Moncure D. Conway. 

When one is taking interesting letters from his 
table-drawer and presenting them, so far as con- 
tents are concerned, to readers with whom he has 
no personal acquaintance and who will give for 
them in return nothing beyond the paltry price 
of the book in which they are printed, it is 



HOLOGRAPHS 247 

surely right for him to select the letters that 
are to be sacrificed. I say sacrificed because 
never before, so far as I know, were they put 
into print for all the world to read and dis- 
cuss. Put into print, they become in a certain 
sense the property of all who care to read them, 
and never again can the nominal owner lock them 
entirely up in that mysterious table-drawer where 
so many treasures repose. He may do what he 
will with paper and ink-scratches, but the thought 
and feeling that give value to the document are 
henceforth and forever public property. If then 
I may bring out what letters I like most to share 
with my readers, let me continue to press upon 
their attention those that interest us in the bril- 
liant men and women who lead the hosts of dis- 
sent in religious controversy. Here is a letter 
from one of the most courageous of men, who was 
at once a profound scholar and a lover of truth, 
and of his race as well : 

Liverpool, Oct. 25, 1845. 
Rev'd and dear Sir: 

I have been inexcusably long in answering your 
gratifying and interesting letter. To the fault of 
delay I will not add the offense of self- justification 
or fruitless apology: but, in reliance on your for- 
bearing disposition, proceed at once to the main 
subject of interest between us. 

In your general position, that mere textual con- 
troversy can never settle the points at issue be- 
tween the Unitarians and their orthodox opponents, 
I certainly concur. No doubt there is a preliminary 
question to be set at rest, as to the degree and kind 



248 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

of authority to be conceded to the Scriptures, and a 
controversy between two parties secretly at vari- 
ance on this preliminary is an aimless battle of the 
blind. That the Unitarians in general do differ 
from other churches on this point, that they see a 
larger human element in the sacred Writings, that 
they are more prepared to acknowledge the mani- 
fest discrepancies in the historical portions, and in- 
conclusive reasonings in the doctrinal, that, practic- 
ally, their submission to Scripture is conditional on 
its teaching no nonsense, I am fully persuaded. 
And believing this to be their state of mind, — often 
ill-defined to themselves, — I cannot but disapprove 
as insincere their professions of agreement with the 
orthodox on everything except Interpretation, their 
appeal to the Scriptures under the misleading name 
of the Word of God, their affected horror at every- 
one who plainly speaks about the Bible the truths 
which they themselves, if they would dare to con- 
fess it, privately hold; and the various other arti- 
fices of theological convention, by which they de- 
lude themselves and hang out false colors to the 
world. To this moral untruthfulness and the un- 
reality it gives to their position, much more than 
to their errors and unsoundness as interpreters, do 
I attribute the small amount of their success as a 
religious sect. I believe indeed, with you, that their 
interpretations of the writings of the Apostles John 
and Paul are altogether untenable, and that, so 
long as the people gather their theological faith 
without discrimination, from the Epistles and the 
Fourth Gospel, our doctrines cannot prevail. 

But then I am unable to accept the other half of 
your proposition ; I cannot admit that, because the 
Unitarians, as interpreters, are wrong, the Evangel- 
icals are right. If the Apostle Paul could come and 
hear one of Hugh McNeile's sermons, I am per- 
suaded he would be aghast with indignation, and 



HOLOGRAPHS 249 

protest vehemently against the wretched perver- 
sion of his letters to the early churches. So long as 
both parties take for granted that Paul, with full 
knowledge of the destinies of Christianity as the 
religion of successive ages, wrote on the theory of 
human nature in its moral relations to God and laid 
down universal truths as to the scheme of the Di- 
vine Government from the Creation to the judg- 
ment, so long both parties must go astray. No just 
view can, in my opinion, be reached till it is remem- 
bered that the Apostle wrote everything from an 
erroneous assumption as to the approaching end of 
the world. This is not a slight matter which can 
be put aside as an incidental imperfection in his 
opinions. From its very nature, so grand, so trans- 
porting, it necessarily absorbed everything into it, 
tinged all his theory of the Past and his visions of 
the Future, determined his estimate of Christ's 
mission and gave a peculiarity of the highest im- 
portance to his sentiments in reference to the rela- 
tive position of the Hebrew and the Pagan worlds. 
From their entirely missing his point of view, the 
Evangelicals appear to me to be no less completely 
wrong than the Unitarians in their interpretation 
of Paul. I do not know whether the publications 
connected with the Liverpool Controversy in 1839 
have attracted your attention at all, but if they 
have, you will recognise in my present statements 
the opinions more fully expressed in the "Fifth 
and Sixth Lectures" of that Series. Though ques- 
tions of interpretation shrink to a very diminished 
importance as soon as we cease to stake our faith 
upon them, a clear understanding of what the Apos- 
tle Paul really meant is more than a mere matter 
of curiosity. It is a vast relief to men accustomed 
to a Calvinistic reading of the Epistles to discover 
in them, without the slightest straining, a very dif- 
ferent system of ideas, and the "Sixth Lecture" to 



250 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

which I refer has, I know, among Joseph Barker's 
people been the means of bringing hundreds over 
from the ranks of orthodoxy. 

Still, no satisfactory way can be made toward 
the pure truth and the free heart till the prevalent 
Bibliolatry is overthrown. And, for my own part, I 
have never shrunk and hope I never shall shrink 
from taking my little part in the iconoclastic work. 
At the same time, I so heartily reverence all sincere 
and earnest religion that the simply destructive pro- 
cedure of controversy is only half welcome to me, — 
performed with some reluctance. I am always 
ready for it in self-defence, but dislike it as a meas- 
ure of aggression. To draw forth the permanent 
elements of Christianity from the Scriptures; to 
impart to men such a consciousness of the adapta- 
tion of these to their nature that all doubt of their 
sufficiency shall become impossible; to make no dis- 
guise about the temporary and questionable charac- 
ter of all the rest; to attack only inordinate claims 
set up for it when requisite, — -but for the most part 
to let those claims die out by forming men's spiritual 
and moral taste on better models and by the constant 
presence of higher ideas; this appears to me to be 
the true course for those who love Christianity for 
what it is more than they dislike its counterfeits 
for what they are not. Bigots of all classes will refuse 
a hearing to those who — with or without a name — 
boldly challenge their favorite opinions; and all 
other men — such at least is my cheering faith — are 
more readily drawn to noble and true ideas than 
driven from mean and false ones. What compari- 
son, for instance, can there be between the amaz- 
ing influence of Channing on the sentiments of his 
age and the most brilliant success that could attend 
on any writings that stopped with the disproof of 
prevalent theological errors and superstitions? I 
think, however, you will admit that I am not charge- 



HOLOGRAPHS 251 

able with reserve on the question of Inspiration, 
and that especially in the "Second Lecture of the 
Liverpool Controversy" ('The Bible, what it is, and 
what it is not"), the very sentiments to which you 
attach importance are plainly advanced. 

At all events, my dear Sir, I am greatly indebted 
to you for your valuable suggestions. Possibly if I 
were a man of leisure, I should put your sugges- 
tions at once into practice. But my course of la- 
bour as minister of a large congregation, as Pro- 
fessor in a public college, as an Editor of a Review, 
as, not least, father of a large family that I must 
educate at home, is very much marked out for me; 
and I must hope by faithfulness in these several 
callings to do incidentally some small portion of 
the good work which your kind opinion would as- 
sign to me by practice or precept. 

Believe me Rev. and dear Sir, 
Yours with true regard, 

James Martineau. 

To the Rev. Geo. Crabbe. 

Not all men have Dr. Martineau's mind; few 
are gifted with his ability or dowered with his 
wealth of scholarship. Yet earnest men are found 
in every religious faith, and nowhere shall we 
look in vain for brave souls intent on knowing 
the truth. Here is a letter written by a man un- 
known to fame. I spread it before my readers 
not because of any interest in the writer, but be- 
cause of the kindly and beautiful spirit reflected 
in every word, and also because it seems to me 
to fit into the train of thought awakened by the 
letters already given: 



252 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

My dear Friend: 

The questions contained in yours of the nine- 
teenth and which cause you so much mental and 
moral unrest are, in my opinion, unanswerable from 
a purely scientific point of view. The question of 
Immortality is open upon every side to doubt and 
uncertainty. What Prof. Fiske has said in his 
"Life Everlasting" appears to me to be the most 
helpful and hopeful, if not absolutely the best sin- 
gle treatise in the direction indicated in your letter. 
My friend, a short time before his death, told me 
that he regarded the question of Immortality as one 
of probability only. He thought it amounted to 
nothing more than a great and alluring hope. The 
hope when entertained by noble souls is noble and 
to be encouraged: when held by a rude and selfish 
spirit it is base and of no value whatever. I share 
in some degree his uncertainty, though I do not al- 
ways possess his calm and tender trust in the good- 
ness of the final outcome. There are some excellent 
reasons for believing in the deathlessness of man's 
spiritual nature, and those reasons seem to me to 
rather gain than lose as the years go by. May it 
not be that the noble and divine part of our race 
will survive the shock of death, if, indeed, there is 
any shock in death? Why should the great multi- 
tude who have no worthy use for the few years they 
have now and here, find themselves possessors of an 
endless existence? Harriet Martineau, when dying, 
said: "I have had a noble share of life, and I do 
not ask for any other life." But I should say that 
Miss Martineau was just the kind of woman to 
make good use of an eternity, and I cannot but en- 
quire, "What about the millions of men and women 
who have not had a noble share of life?" 

I am unable to answer your questions. All you 
say about Jesus I both believe and feel. There 



HOLOGRAPHS 253 

have been times in my life when the thought of him 
saved me from absolute despair, and, it may be, 
from suicide. To that extent, at least, I may speak 
of Jesus as my Saviour. His ideal of life is the 
highest of which we have any knowledge. His life 
as recorded in the Gospels is the sweetest, the holi- 
est, and in every way the best this world has ever 
seen. There is a sense in which I worship him. 
His memory and recorded words I love. Perhaps 
I thus feel because of early religious training, for 
I had, as you know, a Christian father and a 
mother who prayed for me every day. I can never 
get away from the power of my mother's life of 
faith. It holds me fast as nothing else can. But 
in all this there is, I am fully aware, no satisfying 
and substantial foundation for religious certitude; 
nor is there any approach to an answer for the 
great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" 

My dear friend, we are neither of us young, and 
very soon if there is any other side we shall know 
it; if there is not, we shall not survive to regret it. 
We can only conjecture with regard to eternity, but 
we do know something about time and the life that 
now is. We know that truth is better than a lie, 
that purity it better than lust, that kindness is 
better than cruelty, and so on to the end of the Ten 
Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. 
What more do we require? If we are good and do 
good we live to a worthy end, whether there be any 
life beyond or not. 

I do not think Col. Ingersoll can help you. I 
had once a long conversation with Ingersoll to no 
purpose whatever. He is a kind and good man, but 
quite too much of a party pleader and stump 
speaker. He treats spiritual matters just as he 
deals with political questions, and there all his 
power of helping troubled hearts and consciences 
ends. 



254 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

No, your questions cannot be answered, but you 
can sit at the feet of the noblest of all our race, and 
receive his spirit of love and service. We can both 
of us follow Jesus, and that, in a poor, blind way, I 
am endeavoring to do. We shall make no mistake 
if we cast in our lot with him. There may be an- 
other life and then, again, there may be no such life 
— we cannot know, but we can do our duty, and 
there, I suppose, is the end of the whole matter. 

I wish I could help you, but I cannot help my- 
self along the line you indicate, and surely I am 
powerless to cast much light on the way over which 
we must go. 

I am truly and ever your friend, 

Henry C. Appleton. 

Again I open the little drawer in my library 
table, and extract a letter by Theodore Parker: 

Please do not show this page to anyone: it might 
hurt the feelings of some of the parties. 

Dear Sir: 

This is a list of the best lecturers in and about 
Boston. I put them in their order of merit, as it 
seems to me: 

R. W. Emerson (the King of Lecturers). 

Wendell Phillips (anti-slavery, humane, schol- 
arly, eloquent, and beautiful in matter and manner). 

Prof. H. D. Ropes (a scientific man, learned, 
exact, humorous, generous, liberal-minded. He 
knows everything with great power of making 
clear). 

E. P. Whipple (literary, brilliant, witty, humor- 
ous. He is a keen man, on the fence between the 
"Hunkers" and the "other party"). 

Dr. O. W. Holmes (literary, brilliant, funny, 
satirical; a little malignant, poetical, nice, sharp; 



HOLOGRAPHS 255 

born, bred, and living on the "Hunker" side of the 
fence). 

Then there are persons like Rev. T. W. Higgin- 
son of Newburyport, Mass., Rev. Samuel Johnson 
of Salem, Mass., and Wm. P. Atkinson, Esq., of 
Brookline, Mass. There is one that I ought to men- 
tion with those on the other side of the sheet: viz. 

Rev. A. L. Stone of Boston. He is the minister 
of a celebrated church in the city. He is orthodox, 
able, generous, liberal, a good scholar, and quite 
eloquent. I do not know him, but gather this from 
report. 

I do not find anyone to deliver the lectures on 
Practical Mechanics. We have heard no such thing 
in the English language. But Prof. H. D. Ropes 
I think would do the thing better than any man in 
America, if not too busy with his "Report on the 
Geology of Pennsylvania." He has the knowledge, 
the power of presenting it, and the desire to spread 
the results of science before the working men to a 
greater degree than any other man that I know of. 
If you will write him a letter telling as well as may 
be what you wish, I think he might lecture for you. 
Truly yours, 

Theodore Parker. 
S. F. Seymour, Esq. 

It is interesting to know that John Fiske 
wished in the latter part of his life to disown his 
little book on "Tobacco and Alcohol" which he 
published in 1869 through Leypoldt and Holt. 
Dr. Moncure D. Conway told me that Mr. Fiske 
in the closing years of his life endeavored to work 
his way back to the Christian faith which he had 
repudiated. How great was his success I do not 
know, but certainly two steps were taken, as Mr. 



256 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Fiske supposed, in that direction, — he delivered 
and published his lecture on "Life Everlasting," 
to which reference is made in Mr. Appleton's let- 
ter, and he requested that among the books com- 
prising his collected works the "Tobacco and 
Alcohol" should not have a place. The little book 
is from a scientific point of view quite orthodox, 
if Professor Miinsterberg may be allowed to rep- 
resent either science or orthodoxy. There is no 
reason to think that Mr. Fiske wished to unsay 
anything printed in "Tobacco and Alcohol," but 
it does appear that under the influence of an 
awakened conscience he feared that the influence 
of his book might be found upon the side of in- 
temperance, for its purpose was to prove that "the 
coming man will drink wine," and that "it does 
pay to smoke." The book was a fierce and most 
uncharitable onslaught upon Mr. James Parton, 
who had published a very commonplace and not 
over-interesting book called "Smoking and Drink- 
ing," in which tobacco and alcohol are repre- 
sented as being responsible for most of the wick- 
edness and misery of our suffering world. This 
is the letter which Fiske wrote in 1893 to Lynds 
E. Jones, and which represents his final feeling 
with regard to the book under discussion. As the 
letter is brief and has, so far as I know, appeared 
up to the present time nowhere else, it may not 
be unwise to take it from the drawer for the en- 
tertainment of my readers: 



HOLOGRAPHS 257 

Cambridge, Oct. 26, 1893. 
Lynds E. Jones, Esq., 
Dear Sir: 
The article in Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of 
American Biography," Vol. II., p. 469, was written 
by myself, and contains all needed facts, except as 
regards the list of my published works. If you give 
such a list at all, please omit "Tobacco and Alco- 
hol"; omit the statement that I am publishing a 
"History of the American People"; add "The Crit- 
ical Period of American History," Boston, 1888 
"The Beginnings of New England," Boston, 1889 
"The War of Independence, for Young People,' 
Boston, 1889; "Civil Government in the United 
States," Boston, 1891; "The Discovery of Amer- 
ica," 2 vols., Boston, 1892. 

Yours very truly, 

John Fiske. 

To a letter of inquiry addressed to Houghton, 
Mifflin & Company, a reply was returned under 
date of June 2d, 1905, from which the follow- 
ing excerpt is taken : 

We wish to thank you for the information which 
you send regarding Fiske's "Tobacco and Alcohol." 
We know of this little book. Prof. Fiske made out 
the list of his writings which he desired to have in- 
cluded in the Standard Edition which we publish, 
and he did not desire to have the little book you 
refer to perpetuated for obvious reasons. It was 
therefore left out. Our edition is the only author- 
ized standard edition, and as we stated before, its 
contents were arranged by Prof. Fiske, and it was 
his intention that it should be regarded as the au- 
thorized edition of his writings. 

With best regards, we are 

Yours very truly, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Company. 



258 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

The publishers do not say just what is to be 
understood by those two words "obvious reason," 
but guided by Conway's statement the meaning 
can be found, I think, with no great difficulty. 
Yet there have been and there still may be found 
men of even greater learning than was the pos- 
session of Mr. Fiske, and men whose consciences 
are quite as sensitive as was the newly-stirred 
conscience of the author of "Tobacco and Alco- 
hol" who have used and who still use both tobacco 
and alcohol. Professor James has represented al- 
coholic stimulation as standing to the poor and 
unlettered in the place of symphony concerts and 
literature, but he adds : "It is a part of the deeper 
mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and 
gleams of something that we immediately recog- 
nize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many 
of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what 
in the totality is such a degrading poison." Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg tells us that "the master- 
pieces of music and poetry which are beyond the 
comprehension of the poor and unlettered have 
been the result of the use of alcohol." There is 
absolutely no period in history, as there is abso- 
lutely no nation upon the earth, in which we do 
not find evidence of this dependence upon stimu- 
lants and narcotics. It has been estimated that of 
alcoholic liquors there is an aggregate product 
every year enough, if collected into one sea, to 
float the united navies of the world. The esti- 
mate is, I think, to be doubted, but certainly the 



HOLOGRAPHS 259 

amount is far beyond the thought of most of 
those who give the matter consideration. Coffee 
leaves are taken in the form of infusion by two 
millions of the world's inhabitants, to say noth- 
ing of the greater use of the coffee berry. Para- 
guay and Chinese teas are consumed by more 
than five hundred millions of our race. Opium is 
taken by about four hundred millions. Every 
year about 865,000,000 pounds of tobacco are 
consumed. To tell the truth, I cannot but feel 
sorry that Fiske's little book on "Tobacco and 
Alcohol" is not included in the final and other- 
wise complete set of his wonderfully interesting 
and valuable works. 

Here is a letter from Horace Greeley that, 
while it has little other value, is of considerable 
importance as a specimen of Mr. Greeley's indif- 
ference to some of the common refinements of 
civilized life: 

New York, Sept. 27, 1852. 
Sir: 

I haven't the honor of knowing you from a side 
of sole-leather, and cannot say that your epistolary 
exhibitions have begotten in me any fervent desire 
to make your acquaintance. I know nothing of 
your essay on "Democracy," and I think I never 
saw it, nor heard of it save in your letter. 

I beseech you, if you suppose me in any manner 
your debtor, to collect whatever amount may be 
due you forthwith. Don't let it rest an hour, for 
though I am not one penny in your debt, I desire 
to have any suspicion that I might be, dispelled as 



260 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

soon as possible. So bother me with no more let- 
ters (as none will be answered), but trot out your 
bears. 

Yours, 

Horace Greeley. 

Here is a note from Henry Ward Beecher, ad- 
dressed to the Rev. John Sullivan D wight, who 
was for some time a Unitarian preacher, and who 
later edited "Dwight's Journal of Music." Mr. 
Dwight was a musical critic of exceptional abil- 
ity, and will be remembered as the author of a 
little poem, the first stanza of which runs thus: 

"Sweet is the pleasure 
Itself cannot spoil! 
Is not true leisure 
One with true toil?" 

Mr. Beecher's letter has in it all the directness 
and wit for which the great Brooklyn preacher 
was so distinguished: 

Brooklyn, March 23rd, 1865. 
My dear Mr. Dwight: 

I am very much obliged to you for your reply. 
It was useful. As to Mr. Thayer: 

1st. What would he consider a good salary? Let 
him say plainly. 

2nd. To what extent is he willing to do the mu- 
sical work of our congregation? i. e., the care and 
training of the children, the conduct of our reli- 
gious week-night meetings, and the training of our 
congregation in singing. 

In other words, would he make an enthusiasm 
of our work, or would he hunger and thirst after 



HOLOGRAPHS 261 

Philharmonic grandeur and a National Superhuman 
Choral Pentecostal Society for the Musical Regen- 
eration of the World? 

No man can be the musical pastor of a church 
without undertaking a good deal of work. 

Is he apt and influential with men in commu- 
nity? Our congregation is large, and wrecks any 
man who has no general in him. 

I am truly yours, 

H. W. Beecher. 

P. S. Can you, by asking a question, tell me the 
standing of Mr. Wilder of Bangor, Me.? He will 
be known among musical convention men. 

H. W. B. 

The body of John Howard Payne, or so much 
of it as could be found, was in 1883 removed 
from the old grave in Tunis, and deposited in 
Oak Hill Cemetery at Georgetown. The poet of 
"Home, Sweet Home" died April 1st, 1852. Lit- 
tle of the body was found after those thirty 
years of burial, but the public was led to believe 
that the entire skeleton was obtained, and that it 
was brought to America. Even the bones had 
become fine dust. A little gilt used in the con- 
struction of the epaulets and the gilt stripes that 
were on the sides of the trousers, with a button or 
two of metal and a mere spicule of bone, were all 
that was found. The real grave of Payne was 
and still is upon the other side of the ocean, 
where it should have remained undesecrated. 

Mr. Horace Taylor was at the time of the 
opening of Payne's grave the Consul at Mar- 



262 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

seilles. Acting under instruction from the State 
Department, he forwarded the body, or so much 
of it as could be secured, to the United States. 
An article in the New York Evening Post of Oct. 
£1, 1901, describing Mr. Taylor's part in the 
removing of the body, did what it could to unde- 
ceive the public in the matter of the exhumation. 
I addressed Mr. Taylor a letter on the subject, 
and received from him in return a letter of some 
interest as showing the exact condition of the re- 
mains. That letter is here given, and its lesson 
is, I think, this, that the graves of distinguished 
men should not be disturbed after time has hal- 
lowed them: 

Treasury Department, Washington, D. C. 
October 26, 1901. 
My dear Sir: 

I am in receipt of your letter of October 23rd 
with reference to the disinterment of the remains 
of John Howard Payne as reported in an article in 
a late number of the New York Evening Post. The 
article in question was not altogether accurate. 
The correspondent told me he had written it sev- 
eral months ago, but it had been mislaid or for some 
reason not published until now. It is not, as 
stated, true that I was present at the time the cof- 
fin containing Payne's remains was opened, al- 
though my son was there and Mr. Reade, an offi- 
cial of the British Government, and they reported 
to me that the remains had substantially gone to 
dust and little of the skeleton was left. The most 
conspicuous features of the remains were the gold 
buttons and traces of the gold leaf that had orna- 
mented the uniform in which he was buried. It 



HOLOGRAPHS 263 

was thought desirable that such of his remains as 
were left should be properly encased in a suitable 
casket covered with lead, outside of which was put 
a hardwood coffin, and a strong box still outside of 
these. Enclosed in this way the remains were sent 
by me to New York, as per instructions from the 
State Department. 

Very truly yours, 

H. A. Taylor. 

I treasure among my mementos of "the irre- 
pressible conflict" which, when I was a youth, 
filled all the land with wild disorder, this half of 
a letter the poet Hayne addressed to some one 
dear to him, but to me unknown: 

Can we ever forgive the infernal people who 
have reduced us to such wretched vassalage? 

My chief delight in editing the "Southern Opin- 
ion" is to have some opportunity of abusing the 
Puritan, and, indeed, the whole Yankee Race. 

I know not how long this may be permitted. 
Some fine morning we may all be quietly clapped 
in a Yankee Bastile! But what does it matter? 
Life is worth but little now, and I don't see that 
we need care very particularly about consequences. 

Pray give our united love to Cousin Lucy, and 
kiss "Douschka" for us. Willie often speaks of his 
"Cousin Francis." He has grown much, and is 
fond of his books. 

Always Faithfully, 

Paul H. Hayne. 

There certainly can be no doubt in any mind 
after a glance at the above fragment that the 
gifted poet of the Sunny South was quite un- 
reconstructed. 



264 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

The next letter is a long one, but it seems to 
me that its contents will justify an unabridged 
transcript : 

My dear Mr. Wilde: 

How shall I apologize to you for my long neg- 
lect to answer your kind and so highly prized let- 
ter of May 11th? Shall I tell you that this is the 
third attempt I have made to write to you, and that 
sickness (not my own) interrupted the first, that 
a fit of despondency or the blues broke up the sec- 
ond attempt, and caused me to tear in pieces the 
vile and unworthy answer to your beautiful letter, 
and, finally, my wife's confinement prevented an- 
other effort to write from being made until I could 
assure you of her health as well as of my own. 

I can say now that we are all well and in good 
spirits; and in the word "all" I wish you to include 
another little daughter whom we intend to name 
"Florence," as my wife thinks it will jingle well 
with Powers. She appears to be a fine sample of 
what may be done in Tuscany, and I might fill sev- 
eral pages with descriptions of her various excel- 
lencies. But as I am writing to a grave philoso- 
pher, and not to his sister, I shall forbear. My 
wife at this moment is telling me that she will write, 
and that Miss Wilde shall have all about this prod- 
igy even to the most minute description of her toe 
nails. This account she intends to insert in her 
reply to the letter she received from your sister 
soon after I received yours. 

I received a letter full of kind expressions from 
Col. Preston not long ago, and I answered it im- 
mediately and assured him of his mistake in sup- 
posing I had not written to him for a whole year. 
It is true, however, that I did not write so often 
as I should have done. The truth is, I write to 



HOLOGRAPHS 265 

him always with embarrassment, for I know not 
how to express the high sense I entertain of his 
noble conduct towards me. I fear to give utterance 
to my thought lest my sincerity be suspected, and 
then if I say too little I may appear unmindful of 
his goodness. I feel much more at ease while I 
think of doing something for him than I do while 
writing to him. This is all wrong, I know very well, 
yet I cannot help myself. I must feel so. But in 
future I am resolved to write to him freely. I 
need not say that his letter placed my mind at ease 
in regard to pecuniary matters. 

I am now in another studio. It is near the Gol- 
doni Theatre, and I think it the finest studio in 
Florence. The rooms are large and high and well 
lighted, so that my statue appears to much greater 
advantage than in the old studio. The statue is not 
yet finished in clay, but there remains now but little 
to be done, and I think I may safely say it has 
been much improved since you saw it. There have 
been no material alterations made, but instead 
slight changes and modifications over the whole of 
it so that the improvements appear as greater reali- 
ties of flesh and movement of the parts. All this 
you perceive in a moment on looking at it. It was 
a nice thing to convey the statue from the old stu- 
dio to the new one, and I constructed a machine for 
the purpose which answered perfectly. It was 
made on the principle of the universal joint, so that 
the statue hung, as it were, like a pendulum, and 
swayed gently in every direction according to the 
irregular motion of the four men who bore the whole 
concern on their shoulders. I believe this to have 
been the first instance of carrying a clay model of 
a standing statue the distance of half a mile with- 
out the slightest injury. 

Col. Thomson informed me lately that it was 
possible you might not conclude to return here, he 



266 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

having received a letter from which he so inferred. 
This information brought on another fit of the 
blues, for I had regarded your coming back to Flor- 
ence as a thing to be counted on, and I had looked 
forward to the time of your return with confidence 
and extreme pleasure. 

I have lately received a letter from the son of 
Mr. Van Buren in reply to one written by me to 
his father on the subject of the bust sent to him to 
the care of Messrs. Goodhue & Co. In this letter 
Mr. Van Buren authorizes his son to say that he 
had no knowledge of ever having given me an order 
for his bust. Judge of my surprise on reading such 
a statement. Fortunately Mr. Clevenger is a wit- 
ness to Mr. Van Buren's acknowledgement of hav- 
ing given me an order, and at several different 
times, while he (Mr. C.) was modeling another 
bust of Mr. Van Buren. So I took the evidence of 
Mr. Clevenger in writing, and I also wrote myself 
a statement of the facts as they occurred, and sent 
all in a letter to Messrs. Goodhue & Co., with di- 
rections to publish them, and have the bust sold at 
public auction in New York. Mr. Van Buren's 
letter and my statement and Mr. Clevenger's evi- 
dence together place the character of Mr. Van 
Buren in rather an unfavorable light, — that is, if 
the words of two humble individuals like Mr. Clev- 
enger and myself will stand against the denial of 
an ex-President of the United States. As you will 
most probably see the correspondence in some 
newspaper, I will not repeat it here. I merely men- 
tion that he gave me the order verbally at the 
time when he was about going into the presidential 
chair, and he received my letter, as his son states, 
announcing the arrival of the bust just as he was 
leaving it, and this may account for his forgetful- 
ness as well as for his patronage of the fine arts. 
Mr. Van Buren sat, in the first instance, at my re- 



HOLOGRAPHS 267 

quest, and it was a long time after that he ordered 
a marble copy of the bust. He said, "Let me pay 
you for it," and I took him at his word, and charged 
him perhaps a trifle over expenses — the charge was 
$500. 

Mr. Greenough has sent off the Washington, but 
stays here himself, which I wonder at, for I think 
he should be there to look to the placing of it. Col. 
Thomson has left here for Paris on business, and 
Greenough is about traveling with his wife on a 
tour of pleasure to Milan, Munich, etc. Gov. Ever- 
ett is here, but not in the city. Clevenger and I 
are "cocks of the walk" among the Americans you 
know here. Mr. Baldwin is living at a villa outside 
of Florence. 

Lady Bulwer and Mrs. Trollope have just left 
Florence for the baths of Lucca. I saw but little 
of them. Lady Bulwer became a great favorite 
with Mr. Greenough. She is a fine looking woman, 
as to person, with rosy cheeks and flashing eyes. 
She tells pretty hard things about her husband, but 
as I heard her say that she had been stung by a 
wasp one day, by a bee on the next, and last night 
had been bitten by a tarantula — all in Florence — I 
thought it not difficult for Lady Bulwer to "stretch 
it a little" in her stories, especially as a tarantula 
here happens to be toothless. 

Mr. Peale has not yet sent me the rattle-snake's 
head, but do not give yourself any trouble about it, 
as I can obtain engravings which with recollections 
will enable me to do without it. 

If there be anything in which I can serve you 
do let me know of it and always rely on me as one 
ever ready and eager to be of use to you. I have 
written this hastily for fear of another breaking 
off; and I dare not look it over for fear of being 
tempted to burn it, it is written so badly in all re- 
spects. I will do better in the future. My wife 



268 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

joins me in best regards to your sister and to your- 
self. 

Believe me ever truly yours, 

Hiram Powers. 
Florence, July 12th, 1841. 

There is good reason for believing that Pow- 
ers was mistaken in thinking that ex-President 
Van Buren had given him an order. Van Buren 
was regarded in his day as a very trickish and 
unreliable politician, but his private honesty was 
never, so far as I know, seriously challenged. We 
are easily deceived. It is quite possible that both 
Powers and his friend Clevenger were wrong, 
though they were sure they had heard the order 
given which Mr. Van Buren declared he never 
gave and never intended to give. I know a paral- 
lel case in which a brother and sister both profess 
to have witnessed an engagement which they rep- 
resent another brother to have made, and which 
to my certain knowledge he did not make. So 
sure are they of what is not true that nothing 
short of a miracle could undeceive them. This 
being an age far removed from heavenly won- 
ders, the unkind error must continue to live its 
own evil life to the end, and the wrong must go 
unrighted. I cannot believe Mr. Van Buren a 
miscreant, nor do I think the sculptor dishonest. 
I count the case to be one of misunderstanding, in 
which all the persons concerned were both honest 
and wrong. 

Here is a letter from one of the witnesses ap- 



HOLOGRAPHS 269 

pointed to view the remains of Abraham Lincoln 
when they were entombed for the last time, and 
whose duty it was to identify those remains from 
a personal acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln during 
his life. The interest that attaches to this letter 
for us and others grows out of associations con- 
nected with its contents, and not out of any pe- 
culiar value that belongs to the manuscript itself. 
In fact, the letter is type-written, the signature 
only being the direct work of the writer's pen, so 
that strictly speaking it is not a manuscript. The 
letter is addressed to me, and is in response to 
an inquiry concerning the condition of Mr. Lin- 
coln's body when exhumed for reinterment. 

Alton, 111., Dec. 12th, 1901. 
My dear Sir: 

I received a letter from you some time ago re- 
garding the condition of the body of Abraham Lin- 
coln which was lately reinterred at Springfield, 
while I was acting Governor of this State. Your 
letter was addressed to me at Springfield, and was 
forwarded to me here, and mislaid until to-day, 
when the same was found by me. In answer to 
your inquiry I will say that the body was in an ex- 
cellent state of preservation, and the features were 
recognizable by any one who had ever seen Mr. 
Lincoln. Even his clothing seemed to have been 
little affected by the length of time since his first 
burial. The splendid condition of the remains was 
a very agreeable surprise to all who saw them. I 
have not received your book. I am sorry that I did 
not reply sooner, and beg your pardon for so care- 
lessly mislaying your letter. 

Yours very truly, 

John J. Brenholt. 



270 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

The body of Lincoln was thoroughly embalmed 
by Dr. Thomas Holmes, who lived at the time in 
Brooklyn, N. Y. The process, which was known 
to Dr. Holmes only, was unlike any employed be- 
fore his time and was a secret that he guarded 
with great care until at last it was interred with 
him in his grave. 

During the Civil War Dr. Holmes embalmed 
the bodies of a number of distinguished soldiers, 
and so it came to pass that President Lincoln be- 
came interested in the process and expressed a 
wish that after his death his own body might be 
embalmed by Dr. Holmes, should the Doctor be 
living at the time. 

Dr. Holmes advertised his art, and invited the 
representatives of the press and a number of 
prominent men to examine his claims. He ex- 
hibited specimens of his work, some of which had 
been embalmed more than thirty years. Few took 
any interest in the discovery, and in disgust and 
disappointment Dr. Holmes resolved to take the 
secret with him to his grave. His last request 
was that when he was dead his own remains should 
not be embalmed, and his wish was respected. 

When first entombed the remains of Lincoln 
were deposited in a red cedar coffin which was en- 
closed by a leaden coffin. Both coffins were placed 
in a sarcophagus. An attempt was made to steal 
the body, which led to a re-burial. A new grave 
was dug in the crypt of the magnificent monu- 
ment in Oak Ridge Cemetery at Springfield, 111., 



HOLOGRAPHS 271 

and on the fourteenth of April, 1887, the leaden 
coffin was placed in this grave, which was then 
filled in with six feet of concrete and covered with 
the sarcophagus. 

On the 26th of September, 1901, the last en- 
tombment of the body of Abraham Lincoln took 
place, and it is thought that never again can any 
occasion arise for the removal of the remains, as 
the monument beneath which it reposes is in every 
way satisfactory and worthy of the memory of 
the great man whose sacred dust it guards. 

At a conference of the Monument Commission- 
ers which took place in the Memorial Hall con- 
nected with the Monument, the question of open- 
ing the coffin was discussed. It was necessary to 
view the body for the purpose of identification, 
so that there might be for all time a certainty in 
the public mind that the sacred dust was actually 
contained in the tomb beneath the Monument that 
a grateful people had reared to the memory of 
the illustrious dead. Everyone was excluded from 
the room except members of the Commission and 
the Lincoln Guard of Honor and the workmen 
who were to break open the metal casing. It was 
the first time since May 13th, 1887, that the re- 
mains were exposed to view. The features and 
hands were found, as Gov. Brenholt stated in the 
letter quoted, "in an excellent state of preserva- 
tion." The formality of identification accom- 
plished, the casket was resealed and the workmen 
bore it on their shoulders to the place prepared 



272 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

for it — a bed of iron and masonry fifteen feet 
below the base of the shaft of the Monument. 

The Lincoln Monument is of Quincy granite 
upon a foundation of concrete. The main plat- 
form is fifteen feet and ten inches from the 
ground, and is reached by four staircases, one at 
each corner of the balustrades. The platform is 
floored with Illinois limestone, and forms the 
foundation for the statuary, which rests upon 
shafts eleven feet in diameter. From the center 
rises the shaft twelve feet square at the base and 
eight at the top, ninety-eight feet and four inches 
from the ground. A winding staircase within 
conducts to the top. Just below the upper base 
of this shaft are shields of polished granite bear- 
ing the names of the States and joined together 
by bands of polished stone. Heroic groups in 
bronze adorn the Monument, and above them 
rises a bronze statue of Lincoln holding in his 
hands the Proclamation of Emancipation. The 
statue was modeled by Larkin G. Mead, and is 
regarded as a noble production of the best 
American art. At the base of the Monument are 
Memorial Hall, containing various relics of the 
President, and the crypt in which the body was 
at first placed and where it remained for some 
time. 

It is difficult to determine wherein lies the pe- 
culiar charm of autograph-collecting. Perhaps 
the sense of personal contact with distinguished 



HOLOGRAPHS 273 

and interesting characters and close association 
with deeds of historical importance may have 
much to do with the delight which attaches to the 
possession of rare and interesting letters and doc- 
uments. To hold in one's own hand the identical 
paper that once a great poet or statesman held, 
and to gaze upon lines there traced by one who 
has, in his literary work, placed the entire civi- 
lized world under obligation to himself, is surely 
a great delight. There is also to be added, in 
many cases, actual information of importance im- 
parted by the document, or, it may be, a confirma- 
tion of information already possessed. The let- 
ters and journals of men who have filled positions 
of public trust are often of the utmost value. 
Furthermore, there is something in the actual 
autograph that introduces its possessor to an 
inner knowledge of the writer. The kind of pen- 
manship, the orthography and punctuation, and 
the grammatical construction all have much to do 
with our acquaintance with the author. 

The hour is late. With care I fold these let- 
ters, one by one, and lay them away in the little 
drawer. I turn the key and leave them to silence 
and repose. Thus at last must come to us, human 
documents, the evening hour when we, creased byj 
time and somewhat the worse for much handling, 
shall be consigned to darkness and oblivion. Yet 
when night falls upon the busy world, some- 
where the sun will still continue to shine. Shall 



274 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

I think so much of these letters that I guard with 
lock and key, and shall the Author of these "liv- 
ing epistles" that are "known and read of all 
men" care nothing for His hand-writing? It 
cannot be. 



XI 

AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 



'Along the gentle slope of life's decline 
He bent his gradual way, till full of years 
He dropt like mellow fruit into the grave." 

— Porteus. 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 

I 

AT Windsor, in the merry land of England, 
where linger still those simple manners that 
keep us young long after the years have silvered 
the hair and furrowed the brow, there died in 1832 
Thomas Pope, a shepherd who, like the Good 
Shepherd of whom we read in the Sacred Book, 
"loved the sheep." He had seen the flowers of 
ninety-six summers bloom and fade in the door- 
yard that had been the delight of his early days, 
and in which he sat through many a twilight hour 
of the long evening of his well-spent life. 

He commenced tending sheep when as a lad he 
received but two pence per day, and nothing could 
induce him to change his occupation. His humble 
station in life was lifted above the rudeness and 
vulgarity that so easily attach themselves to its 
seemingly trivial duties by the artless sincerity 
and sweet purity of the man. He was every day 
alone with the sheep many hours, and, wanting 
human companionship, he would seat himself 
upon a moss-grown boulder under a spreading elm 
where he could see the creatures of his charge and 
watch with curious attention their way of living. 
He came after a time to love the sheep, and he 
thought them better company than the men and 
women with whom he conversed at the village inn 
and with whom he worshipped in the old stone 
277 



278 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

church, where for many generations his lowly 
ancestors had lifted their untutored hearts to 
Heaven. 

At last the old man came to die, and when the 
doctor could do no more they sent for the 
preacher. "Old Thomas, the Shepherd," for so 
they called him for miles and miles around, lis- 
tened to the reading of the prayers for the sick, 
and added his own quiet and reverent Amen. Then 
he said it was his particular wish that his crook 
and bell might be buried with him — the crook in 
one hand and the bell in the other. 

Early in the morning the sun looked in at the 
window of the low-thatched cottage, but the 
shepherd saw it not, for he had gone far away to 
abide with the countless dead that, if they be not 
great or wise, we soon forget. A crowd of rustic 
folk from far and near, and with them the lord 
of the Manor, followed the shepherd to his lowly 
grave. In the deal coffin that the village carpen- 
ter made were the crook and bell from which old 
Thomas would not be parted. With the funeral 
procession came also the meek-eyed sheep that had 
for so long a time followed their kindly care- 
taker ; and their bleating mingled not irreverently 
with the solemn words of prayer. 

The minister read the Twenty-third Psalm, in 
which the Lord is represented as the Shepherd of 
his people; and then they covered the old man 
with turf, and left him under the flowers and the 
trees that were so soon to drink up the juices of 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 279 

his body, changing them into the beauty of the 
rose and the grateful refreshment of shade under 
boughs of oak and elm. More than seventy years 
the old man has rested in the grave they gave him 
that Autumn day, and now, after so long a time, 
by mere chance, I have come upon the story of his 
obscure life and well-rendered service. There is 
to me something very pleasant in the thought that 
after this life is over, another life in shrub, and 
bush, and tree awaits us. When the body is no 
longer able to entangle the forces of the universe 
in its wonderful web of nerves, arteries, and veins, 
and cannot use them to further its own ends, it is 
handed over to those forces to be by them re- 
solved into its original elements. Two groups of 
natural substances await our coming. The first 
is carbonic acid, water, and ammonia; the second 
is mineral constituents more or less oxidized, ele- 
ments of the earth's structure, lime, phosphorus, 
iron, sulphur, and magnesia. The first group 
passes into the air and becomes food for plants, 
while the second enters the earth and enriches it. 
We do not know precisely what death is, but that 
supreme experience, however we may view it, does 
not separate us from the visible universe. On the 
contrary, it gives us back to the earth so far as 
our material substance is concerned. Uncon- 
sciously we recognize our oneness with the physi- 
cal universe in the emblems and designs with 
which we surround death. In all ages men have 
covered the lifeless forms of their dear ones with 



280 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

the choicest flowers of field and garden. Memorial 
Day in our Southern States and Decoration Day 
at the North breathe the same spirit. By some 
curious association flowers soften the thought of 
death, and take from the grave something of its 
desolation. Our fathers carved upon the grave- 
stone a grewsome skull or an unsightly skeleton, 
but we chisel upon the monuments that mark the 
graves of our loved ones, if not the sacred emblem 
of our faith or some blessed angel winging its 
way heavenward, then a rose to remind us of 
Heaven, or a lily, or it may be some wild flower 
that one sees growing by the brook or in the sun- 
lighted meadow — clover, daisy, or spurge. And 
thus it comes to pass that Nature in no small de- 
gree reconciles our love of life with our certainty 
of death. When we picture in our minds the end 
of earthly existence we frame that picture in all 
the rural beauty and attractiveness of our modern 
garden cemetery. A poet has put something of 
this thought and feeling into graceful lines : 

"Though life speeds on to its ending, 
I am not afraid; 
To protean earth descending, 

I shall pass undismayed, 
Who count the long learning and spending 
By the dream outweighed. 

Bleak winds from eternity blowing 

Pass, leaving no trace; 
The seed of an unfathomed sowing, 

I must sink to my place. 
May it be near a calm river's flowing, 

Where grow green things apace, 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 281 

Where happy lovers thereafter 

Will pause as they roam, 
And house room and sill and rafter 
Will build them a home, 

And there will be children's laughter 
In the garden abloom." 

II 

We like to think that the things most precious 
to us in this life will be in some way associated 
with our death and burial. We desire to rest 
with our kindred, surrounded by the associations 
and natural scenery of earlier days. Napoleon, 
in his will, expresses a wish that gives voice to the 
desire of the human heart in every age and clime. 
The pilgrim to sacred shrines of genius and de- 
votion may read that wish carved upon the mag- 
nificent tomb of the Emperor, high above the door 
leading to the enclosure where rests the sarcopha- 
gus: 

JE DESIRE QUE MES CENDRES 

REPOSENT 

SUR LES BORDS DE LA SEINE 

AU MILIEU DE CE PEUPLE FRAN^AIS 

QUE J'AI TANT AIM£ 

The lovely poem of Ruth, written in the very 
dawn of history, discloses to us the deep and 
abiding secret of human affection in the never- 
to-be-forgotten words of the gentle Moabitish 
woman : "Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to re- 
turn from following after thee: for whither thou 



282 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will 
lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy 
God my God: where thou diest will I die, and 
there will I be buried." When we would express 
our most ardent love for the land we call our own, 
we describe that land as the "burial-place of our 
fathers." Sir Walter Scott hastened home with 
anxious heart, for he would not die in a strange 
land and leave his bones to crumble in foreign 
earth. Washington Irving took great pleasure in 
his quiet and retired life on the banks of the 
Hudson, and he desired above all things that 
when death should have robbed him of his queer 
old seventeenth century mansion and of the 
beauty of river and landscape, his dust might 
mingle with that of his kindred in Sleepy Hollow, 
near the little church in which the credulous 
schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, led the choir. 

And as of places, so of things. The shepherd 
of Windsor was not unlike wiser and greater men 
in his wish to mingle with death the sweeter asso- 
ciations of life. Over the dead Raphael floated 
the Transfiguration which the illustrious artist 
painted for the cathedral of Norbonne in France, 
and which is now preserved among the most sa- 
cred treasures of the Vatican. On Richter's coffin 
they placed a copy of one of his books. The 
great soldier must have his sword accompany him 
to the grave. A western vine-grower whose vine- 
yards made purple all the hill-side had buried 
with him a bottle of his choicest wine. An aged 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 

violinist held in his unconscious grasp the musi- 
cal instrument he loved so well. A clergyman had 
placed in his coffin a copy of the New Testament 
in which his mother had written her name when he 
was a child. In a grave near the city of Rich- 
mond there is deposited a little tin bank filled with 
coins of small value that were collected and prized 
by a child. The mother placed the treasure there 
because in that grave she had herself deposited a 
much greater treasure. All the world knows how 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti buried in his wife's grave 
the manuscript of a volume of his unpublished 
poems. In that volume were some of the poet's 
best verses. The treasure was recovered only 
after the pleading of some of his warmest friends. 
It has always seemed strange to me that so mo- 
mentous and certain an experience as death, an 
experience that so deeply concerns every human 
being, and that of necessity obtrudes itself so 
often upon the mind of man, should be, by almost 
universal consent, excluded from the subject- 
matter of ordinary conversation. An English sov- 
ereign threatened with relentless and severe pun- 
ishment all who should in any way, in his pres- 
ence, hint at the fact of mortality. By tacit 
agreement the very word death is avoided in 
what we call "good society," and for it are sub- 
stituted such weak and poor expressions as "pass- 
ing away," "going to rest," and "falling asleep." 
The old Romans used to say, "He has ceased to 
live." Why should we go all our days in fear of 



284 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

dissolution? I knew of a man who was in great 
distress day and night because he could not re- 
main on earth forever. Much wiser was Walt 
Whitman, whose comforting and reassuring 
poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Door- Yard 
Bloom'd," will live in our literature. One drinks 
in peace with every word of lines like these : 

"Come, lovely and soothing Death, 
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, ar- 
riving, 
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
Sooner or later, delicate Death. 



Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet, 

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest wel- 
come? 

Then I chant it for thee — I glorify thee above all; 

I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed 
come, come unfalteringly. 

Approach, strong Deliveress ! 

When it is so — when thou hast taken them, I joy- 
ously sing the dead, 
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, 
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. 

From me to thee glad serenades, 

Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee — adorn- 
ments and feastings for thee ; 

And the sights of the open landscape, and the 
high-spread sky, are fitting, 

And life and the fields, and the huge and thought- 
ful night. 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 285 

The night, in silence, under many a star; 

The ocean-shore, and the husky whispering wave, 

whose voice I know; 
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well- 

veil'd Death, 
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song! 
Over the rising and sinking waves — over the myr- 
iad fields, and the prairies wide ; 
Over the dense-pack'd cities all, and the teeming 

wharves and ways, 
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O 
Death !" 

Is death painful? No, not in itself. The mere 
act of dissolution is in the very nature of the case 
entirely free from all distress. It must be so, for 
otherwise we should be always in pain, since we 
are always dying. The death of which we speak 
is molecular, but in the final analysis all death of 
which we have knowledge is molecular. We usu- 
ally divide death into Somatic and Molecular. 
Somatic death effects the entire organism, while 
molecular effects only a limited and definite num- 
ber of molecules. "The spherule of force which 
is the primitive basis of a cell," writes Mr. Alger 
in his valuable work, "A Critical History of the 
Doctrine of a Future Life," "spends itself in the 
discharge of its work. The amount of vital ac- 
tion which can be performed by such living cells 
has a definite limit. When that limit is reached, 
the exhausted cell is dead. No function can be 
performed without the disintegration of a certain 



286 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

amount of tissue. This final expenditure on the 
part of a cell of its force is the act of molecular 
death and the germinal essence of all decay. This 
organic law rules in every living structure, and is 
a necessity inherent in creation. . . Wherever we 
look in the realm of physical man, from the red 
outline of the first Adam to the shapeless adipose 
of the last corpse when fate's black curtain falls 
on our race, we shall discern death, for death is 
the other side of life." 

Plants and animals depend for their growth 
upon the subordination of their cells — these yield 
their little lives for the larger life of the whole. 
"The formation of a perfectly organized plant," 
says Leibnitz, "is made possible only through the 
continuous dying and replacement of its cells." 
Even so the cells which compose our structures die 
that we may live, and in like manner our death 
is necessary to the growth and development of the 
race. We are the separate cells that constitute 
the one man, Humanity. His integrity depends 
on our subordination. The greater that subordi- 
nation, the more perfect his structure. 

Molecular death, as has been said, is painless, 
and so it comes to pass that somatic death which 
is still molecular must also be without pain. It 
is true that persons sometimes die in a state of 
torture, but that torture is a phenomenon of dis- 
ease or of some accident, and not of death — the 
distress might befall the man without death. It 
is a fact that death is in most cases free from all 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 287 

association with both physical pain and mental 
distress. Sir Charles Blagden died in his chair 
while drinking coffee, and his departure was so 
calm that not a drop was spilled from the cup in 
his hand. Dr. Black, also, died so composedly 
that the milk in the spoon which he held to his 
lips was all preserved. Dr. Walloston watched 
with scientific interest the gradual failure of his 
own vital power. Dr. Cullen whispered in his last 
moments, "I wish I had the power of writing, for 
then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing 
it is to die." In my book on "The Last Words 
of Distinguished Men and Women" which was 
published a few years ago, I collected the dying 
words of many prominent persons. Very few of 
the persons whose last words are recorded in that 
book faced death with serious apprehension or ex- 
perienced great pain. Dr. Adam of Edinburgh, 
the high-school headmaster, murmured in his de- 
lirium, "It grows dark, boys, you may go." The 
last words of Goethe were, "Draw back the cur- 
tains, and let in more light." The last words of 
Sir Walter Scott, addressed to Lockhart, were, 
"Be a good man, my dear." 

The phrase "last agony" has helped to fasten 
upon the popular mind the belief that death is 
painful. But there is no such thing as a "last 
agony." Death is a normal event, and medical 
science has made it clear that the dying, as a rule, 
pass away in unconscious slumber. Dr. Osier, in 
his Ingersoll lecture on "Immortality," says: "I 



288 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

have careful records of about five hundred death- 
beds, studied particularly with reference to the 
modes of death and the sensations of dying. The 
latter alone concern us here. Ninety suffered 
bodily pain or distress of one sort or another." 
That would make not far from one-sixth of the 
cases observed attended with pain, but this physi- 
cal distress, as Dr. Osier points out, was in no 
instance connected with the act of mortality. It 
was a concomitant of disease and would have been 
precisely the same had the disease ended in re- 
covery. In most cases the immediate cause of 
death is the poisoning of the nerve-centres by car- 
bonic acid. It must be remembered that carbonic 
acid accumulating in the blood is as truly anaes- 
thetic in its action as are chloroform and sulphuric 
ether. It puts the man to sleep, but the sleep is 
one that knows no awakening in this life. The 
poets did not stray far from the truth when they 
described death as a sleep. Thus also our Saviour 
represented death. And thus as well do we, con- 
templating its calmness and repose, view the close 
of our mortal existence as a deep and dreamless 
slumber. Continuing his statement with regard 
to the five hundred death-beds that he had studied, 
Dr. Osier writes: "Eleven showed mental appre- 
hension" (that was before the carbonic acid had 
taken effect), "two positive terror, one expressed 
spiritual exultation, one bitter remorse. The 
great majority gave no sign one way or the 
other; like their birth, their death was c a sleep 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 289 

and a forgetting.' The Preacher was right in 
this matter, for man 'hath no pre-eminence above 
the beast — as the one dieth, so dieth the other.' " 
Nature sustains a balance between animal and 
vegetable life. There was a time, countless cen- 
turies ago, when that balance did not exist. In 
the Carboniferous Age plant-life reached a luxu- 
riance of which we can now form but a faint idea. 
The air had to become respirable for man, and 
then the human race made its appearance. Ani- 
mals inhale oxygen and nitrogen, and exhale car- 
bonic acid, watery vapor, and a trace of animal 
matter in a gaseous form. Plants reverse the 
process, and consume carbonic acid while they 
yield oxygen. The growth of the flora of the 
Carboniferous Age was a means of purifying the 
atmosphere so as to fit it for the higher terrestrial 
life that was afterwards to possess the earth. It is 
by constantly breathing each other's breath that 
man and his neighbor, the tree, live. What, then, 
becomes of the first group into which we are con- 
verted by the beautiful chemistry of death? It 
goes into the air and fills the millions of open 
mouths of vegetables. The hungry plants con- 
sume the carbonic acid which would otherwise 
render the air irrespirable for man. The car- 
bon, separated and assimilated, comes to form 
vegetable fibre. The wood that burns merrily in 
the fire-place, the food and wine that make man 
strong and healthy, the crimson foliage of Aut- 
umn, and the golden grain of harvest-time have 



290 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

passed thousands of times to and from both ani- 
mal and vegetable states of existence Tree and 
man are closely related in the economy of nature* 
Life and death are never far apart. 

Life evermore is fed by death, 

In earth, and sea, and sky; 
And that a rose may breathe its breath, 

Some living thing must die. 

We gaze upon the statue with different emo- 
tions from those with which we look upon a corpse. 
One we recognize as a work of art and the other 
we view as a work of impassive death. The fin- 
gers that lightly glide over the smoothness of one 
are drawn with horror from the coldness of the 
other. Men who faint in the dissecting room 
stand or sit at ease in the sculptor's studio. A 
wide difference is supposed to exist between the 
scalpel and the chisel, but no such difference ex- 
ists. Every atom of marble in the statue once, 
long before man trod the planet, lived and suf- 
fered, and was glad and died. Those little shin- 
ing atoms of marble are the skeletons of animal- 
culae — millions of minute animalculae that were 
fused in the heat of central fires beneath great 
oceans many thousands of years ago. The statue 
is a corpse — more, a congeries of corpses. The 
microscope reveals their disk-like structures; and 
by careful study of what they have left us we 
may come to some knowledge of what the life they 
once lived must have been like. The marbles of 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 291 

Phidias and Polycletus once throbbed with life, 
and the old gods of Greece and Rome were not 
always deaf and blind. 

The earth we tread is a vast cemetery. The 
stones under our feet are all written over with his- 
tories and marvelous tales of the dead — histories 
and tales no eye will ever read, and to which no 
ear will listen. It has been estimated by scientists 
that on each square rod of our earth something 
like 1280 human beings lie buried, each rod being 
scarcely sufficient for ten graves, with each grave 
containing 128 persons. The entire surface of 
our globe, then, has been dug up 128 times to 
bury its dead. The dead are everything, they are 
everywhere, — under our feet, over our heads, and 
on every side. They are in the solid earth on 
which we stand, the unfathomed oceans that sur- 
round our continents, and through the spaces of 
the air they ride on every wind. Not formless 
phantoms wrought from the texture of a dream 
are the unnumbered hosts that come and go 
through all the crowded thoroughfares of life, 
but real and tangible in the perfume of the rose 
and the whiteness of the untrodden snow, the mo- 
tion of the wave and the hardness of the rock, the 
richness of the harvest and the primeval grandeur 
of the forest. In the familiar lines of an Ameri- 
can poet: 

"Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground 



292 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, 

Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 

Thy growth to be resolved to earth again; 

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 

Thine individual being, shalt thou go 

To mix forever with the elements — 

To be a brother to the insensible rock, 

And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain 

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 

With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 

The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good — 

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 

All in one mighty sepulchre." 

It is a popular belief that sensibility remains 
for a time after decapitation. It is said that 
Charlotte Corday's cheeks blushed at the exposure 
of her person; that the eyes of Madame Roland 
opened as if in surprise; that the lips of Phillip 
Egaliti curled in scorn when his head was held up 
to the multitude ; and that the lips of Mary Stuart 
under similar circumstances prayed visibly. There 
may be some truth in the belief that sensibility 
remains for a time. There are certain results of 
scientific observation that look in that direction. 
Brouardel records a case witnessed by competent 
observers in which the heart continued to beat for 
one hour in a decapitated murderer, and he states 
it as a fact that he himself saw the heart beat for 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 293 

more than twenty minutes in a decapitated dog. 
Since life continues in one part of the body, it 
may be it continues as well in other parts. Cell- 
life, it would seem, remains for a time, and that 
life is identical with the larger or somatic life. 
There are dead cells in the living body; and in 
the dead body, it is more than likely, there are 
living ones. These cells have different periods of 
birth and death. Every moment they are being 
formed and destroyed. The man is, physically 
considered, the aggregate of all the various cells 
that make up his body. There are no particles 
in the body that were there when the man was a 
child, and in a few years there will be no particles 
in the organism that are there now. No man's 
body is identically the same two days in succession. 
Concerning the celebrated historic premoni- 
tions of death, it is well to play the skeptic. 
The disease of Fletcher, which caused him to 
send for a sculptor and order his tomb; the 
salutation of Wolsey, so eloquently dramatized; 
the whining cant of Foote, when Weston 
died, "Soon shall others say 'Poor Foote !' " 
and the last picture of Hogarth, which he 
entitled "The End of All Things," adding, 
"This is the end," — all these and many other 
so-called premonitions are open to uncertainty. 
They are unsustained by scientific observation, 
and though they are interesting and in some 
measure astonishing, still they are far from com- 
pelling the mind's assent. Hayden, the unfor- 



294 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tunate painter who, in a fit of despondency, took 
his own life, has this entry in his Journal under 
the date of February 15th, 1815: 

"About this time, I had a most singular dream. 
I dreamed Wilkie and I were both climbing up an 
immensely high wall, at the top of which were 
sweet creatures smiling and welcoming us. He 
could scarcely keep hold, it was so steep and slip- 
pery; when all of a sudden he let go, and I saw 
him wind and curve in the air, and I felt the hor- 
rible conviction that his body would be dashed to 
pieces. After a moment's grief, I persevered and 
reached the top, and there found Mrs. Wilkie and 
his sister, lamenting his death." 

Later, Hayden added, "This is like a presenti- 
ment of his (Wilkie's) dying first." There are 
countless stories of apparitions, spectres, and 
ghosts appearing to men and foretelling the ap- 
proach of death. Perhaps it will never be possi- 
ble to fully explain these premonitions — that is 
to say, to explain them to the reasoning and sci- 
entific mind. Madden, in his " Shrines and Sep- 
ulchres,' says: "A great light of intelligence is 
going out; it flares up occasionally, fitfully per- 
haps, but never fails to make the darkness visible 
that is around it, till every sense has ceased to be 
perceptive and every vital organ has given over 
the performance of its functions." One who has 
been often with the dying has witnessed time and 
time again what Madden describes. As the smould- 
ering embers, fanned by a sudden breeze, start 
into a bright flame, so sometimes the mind glows 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 295 

with unexpected and peculiar brilliancy just be- 
fore it darkens forever. No doubt expectation is 
often responsible for premonitions, and yet there 
is something more in these experiences than mere 
expectation. Ozanam, the distinguished mathema- 
tician, had no thought or anticipation of death, 
and yet so strong was the presentiment when it 
came, and so persistent was it, that he refused to 
take pupils who wished to study under his direc- 
tion. Mozart wrote his Requiem under the con- 
viction that death was at hand. He had not been 
thinking of death, and yet the premonition came 
suddenly and without any expectation on his part. 
In many cases some degree of anticipation is pres- 
ent. A number of stories, some of them well 
authenticated, illustrate the marvellous power of 
imagination and expectation. In Welby's "Mys- 
teries of Life, Death, and Futurity" is this ac- 
count of the use made of suggestion by the 
profligate abbess of a convent, the Princess Gon- 
zaga of Cleves and Guise, and the equally profli- 
gate Archbishop of Rheims. "They took it into 
their heads, for a jest, to visit one of the nuns 
by night and exhort her as a person who was 
visibly dying. While in the performance of their 
heartless scheme they whispered to each other, 
'She is just departing,' and behold she did depart 
in earnest." Suggestion is the very life-blood of 
the psychological side of human existence. We 
are confirmed in what we are or changed for good 
or ill by whatever touches us. The sounds of 



296 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

nature no less than the voice of man influence our 
thought, feeling, and conduct. There is "a 
tongue in the trees" for all who have ears with 
which to catch the marvellous harmony of the 
great world of natural objects that surrounds us. 
There are "books in running brooks" for those 
who can feel the subtile charm of such literature. 
We are moved by unseen, undreamed of influences, 
and even the hardest heart is as clay in the hand 
of the potter. Countless suggestions at every turn 
impress themselves upon our imagination, and 
later years, with riper knowledge and changed 
opinions, are powerless to remove them. Dr. 
Saleeby does not overestimate the force of sugges- 
tion in this striking paragraph which is taken 
from his interesting and profitable book on 
"Worry": 

"It (suggestion) can kill outright, as in well at- 
tested cases, where , for instance, the joke has been 
played of blindfolding a school-boy, telling him 
that he is to be beheaded, and then striking his 
neck at word of command with a wet towel. In 
such circumstances a boy has been known to die in- 
stantly. It can cause unconsciousness, as when the 
nurse injects ten drops of a solution of common 
salt under the soporific name of morphia — in a few 
moments the patient is asleep. It can determine 
immunity or susceptibility to infectious disease, as 
when the person who fears infection is struck down, 
while he or she who does not fear or does not care 
escapes. That these things happen there is no pos- 
sible doubt. That suggestion can produce or relieve 
pain every one knows. That it can produce sub- 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 297 

cutaneous hemorrhages and severe ulcerations is 
proved by the cases of the 'stigmata' of St. Francis 
and others." 

Professor Pavlov, of the Military Academy in 
St. Petersburg, has shown that suggestion has a 
powerful influence over the secretions of the lower 
animals. He demonstrated that the expectation 
of food caused an increased flow of both saliva 
and gastric juice in a dog upon which he oper- 
ated in his laboratory. 

Hypnotic sleep is one of the results of sugges- 
tion, and this sleep is in some cases sufficiently 
profound to enable the patient to undergo a sur- 
gical operation without an anaesthetic. Dr. Aid- 
rich, a distinguished London surgeon, removed a 
woman's leg without resorting to an anaesthetic. 
The physicians who were present doubted the pos- 
sibilty of performing the operation without re- 
sorting to chloroform, but the emergency they 
expected did not arise. While the surgeon was at 
his work, the woman chatted with the nurse and 
drank wine. To an ordinary observer she would 
have appeared perfectly conscious. 

Though it has been shown that death is in itself 
never painful, still multitudes approach it with 
the greatest apprehension. The fear of death, 
which is for the most part a fear of something 
beyond the grave and of which we know but little, 
is well-nigh universal. Man naturally dreads 
what he does not understand : 



298 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

"The dread of something after death — 
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveler returns — puzzles the will; 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 

To this vast uncertainty with regard to the 
future there is added the powerful influence of 
early training. Those who have been educated 
under enlightened views of God, duty, and destiny 
can never know how dreadful has been the torture 
to which the old conceptions of life and death 
have subjected men. The fancied risks of another 
world have plunged this world into abysses of in- 
expressible darkness and distress. Imagination 
called up countless spirits of shame and despair, 
and over all the world inscribed the fearful line 
that Dante saw above the portal of Hell : 

"All hope abandon ye who enter here." 

Our fathers, who were well acquainted with the 
Greek and Latin classics, should have profited by 
the wisdom of one who lived in a darker age than 
that in which they lived and wrought out their 
problems in thought and morals. Thus the old 
poet and philosopher Lucretius taught: "That 
dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which 
disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, 
overcasting all things with the blackness of dark- 
ness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure." 

John Calvin was not only one of the greatest 
of men, but he was a man loyal to the light that 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 299 

was in him. Never was one braver or more stead- 
fast. He counted no cost, but with unshaken pur- 
pose did what he believed to be the will of God, 
and to him the entire Protestant church and all 
who enjoy free institutions are under an obliga- 
tion that can never be discharged. And yet the 
lofty and lonely form of Calvin casts over all 
subsequent history a long dark shadow wherein 
the souls of thousands of men and women, and 
even little children, have experienced the bitter- 
ness of a despair no language is adequate to 
describe. Men were taught that, wicked by na- 
ture and wicked in every part of that nature, they 
were unable to do the will of God, and that still 
they were under obligation to obey God and to 
do His will. Eternal doom could be averted only 
by special grace. The very disability which men 
did not occasion, and which they lamented, was 
in itself sinful. Religion, especially in Scotland 
and New England, was an indescribable night- 
mare. How different was the teaching of Jesus! 
He casts over the world no dark shadow. From 
Him, as from the sun in the heavens, falls the 
gladness and glory of cloudless light. He taught 
men to say, "Our Father who art in heaven." He 
did not hide from men the just judgments of God, 
but He opened their eyes, and lo ! they discovered 
at once that "God is love." Men of feeble faith 
were welcomed ; not all who believe have clear and 
unquestioning faith. Coleridge wrote what 
others as well have experienced: "I should, 



300 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

perhaps, be a happier, at all events a more 
useful man, if my mind were otherwise con- 
stituted. But so it is: and even with regard 
to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I 
creep towards the light, even though it draw me 
away from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I 
should do so, even if the light made its way 
through a rent in the wall of the Temple. My 
praj^er has always been that of Ajax, 'Give me 
light.' " 

The animals below man, though they fear dan- 
ger, show no sign of anxiety with regard to the 
future. They do not fear death. So far as we 
know, they neither understand nor think of the 
end of their individuality. Dr. Grenfell, in his 
little book, "Adrift on an Ice-pan," tells his 
readers how he had to stab several of his dogs in 
order to preserve his own life, and he remarks : 

"The other dogs licked their coats and endeav- 
ored to get dry, but they apparently took no notice 
of the fate of their comrades, — but I was very care- 
ful to prevent the dying dogs from crying out, as the 
noise of fighting would probably have been followed 
by the rest attacking the down dog, and that was too 

close to me on the narrow ice-pan to be pleasant 

In fact, the other dogs after a time tried to satisfy 
their hunger by gnawing at the dead bodies of their 
brothers." 

Man in a savage state has little fear of death. 
He fears sorcery and diabolism for the reason 
that these have power, in his opinion, to so influ- 
ence his lif e on earth as to make it both brief and 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 301 

unfortunate. Only when the unknown seizes upon 
the imagination and demands an explanation, 
because the brain of man has in the process of 
development reached a larger growth, does the 
fear of death become oppressive. The fear is 
largely selfish, and from it escape is possible 
through either religious or altruistic channels : the 
former leads to an alliance with what we dread, 
and the latter conducts the mind away from the 
thought of self. 

The "lighting up before death" to which ref- 
erence has been made, and which is often noticed 
in persons who have remained, sometimes for 
weeks, in a semi-conscious or wholly unconscious 
condition, is not infrequently attributed to psy- 
chological causes, when in reality it is due to the 
presence of venous blood in the brain, caused by 
the non-arterialization of the blood. Thus the 
mind often dwells on visions of coming glory or 
shame, and contemplates heaven or hell. Shak- 
speare makes Queen Catherine, in "Henry VIII.", 
say : "Saw you not even now a blessed troop invite 
me to banquet, whose bright faces cast a thou- 
sand beams upon me like the sun; they promised 
me eternal happiness, and brought me garlands, 
my Griffith, which I feel I am not worthy yet to 
wear." Charles IX. lived over again the fearful 
tragedy of Saint Bartholomew's eve, and in an 
agony of soul cried out: "Nurse, nurse, what 
murder! what blood!" The distinguished Con- 
federate general, "Stonewall" Jackson, started up 



302 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

from a deep sleep, exclaiming, "Let us go over 
the river, and sit under the refreshing shadow of 
the trees." For hours before his death his mind 
was occupied with the thought of trees and of the 
beauty of nature. Thurlow Weed, an American 
journalist of distinction, thought during his last 
hours that he was conversing with President Lin- 
coln and General Scott. 

A number of experiments of various kinds have 
been conducted by psychologists and others with 
the hope of finding out the character of the sensa- 
tions — if there are any — which accompany the 
approach and experience of death. Preaching at 
Saint Pancras Parish Church some time ago, the 
Bishop of London — who had recently undergone 
a slight operation — stated to his hearers his be- 
lief that the anaesthetic which was given him at 
the time disclosed to him something of the mystery 
of death. He said: "At an operation, when you 
receive whatever it is that makes you for the time 
being insensible, you seem to be carried for the 
moment out of the body — the body is for the time 
dead. Your spirit, your mind, is perfectly active. 
I doubt not it is the experience of many others 
that you seem to be swept swiftly under the stars 
toward your God. When you are out of the body, 
or seem to be, if only for a few moments, you 
realize what death will be." But the Bishop as- 
sumed what remains to be proved, — that there are 
any sensations connected with death. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes thought that chloroform had 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 

done for him precisely what the Bishop of London 
thought it had accomplished in his case. Dr. 
Holmes has recorded that when the anaesthetic was 
taking effect he experienced a strange thrill which 
seemed to take possession of his entire body. Like 
Hamlet he said to himself, "Quick, my tablets : let 
me write it down !" But on recovering his senses 
he found that the marvellous disclosure with re- 
gard to death which he was so anxious to set down 
was all summed up in these words, "A strong smell 
of turpentine pervades the whole." The disclos- 
ures of anaesthetics are very much like those of 
Spiritualism, brilliant and hope-inspiring while 
the intoxication lasts, but inexpressibly foolish 
and even silly when once the mind has regained 
control of its faculties. Professor William James 
says, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," 
"Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, 
when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the 
mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree. 
Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to 
the inhaler. This truth fades out, however, or 
escapes at the moment of coming to; and if any 
words remain over in which it seemed to clothe 
itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. Nev- 
ertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having 
been there persists; and I know more than one 
person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide 
trance we have a genuine metaphysical revela- 
tion." 

The "sense of a profound meaning" certainly 



304 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

remained in the case of the Bishop of London. 
But I think we may all of us be quite sure that for 
the scientific mind no help in understanding death 
will ever come from drugs or chemicals of any- 
kind. 

The same phenomena mark the rise and decline 
of life. The circulation of the blood first an- 
nounces existence, and ceases last. The right 
auricle pulsates first, and does not cease until 
death supervenes. The mind loses the faculty of 
association; judgment gives place to recollection; 
and the senses vanish in succession. The ruling 
passion is often, though concealed from child- 
hood, revealed in the hour of death; and the 
thoughts of boyhood bound into the sunset of de- 
clining age. 

Ill 

It is sometimes said that it can be of little 
consequence to a man what disposition the liv- 
ing make of his body when once the breath of 
life has departed from him. But history and 
common experience show us that nothing of the 
kind can be true. Though we may, when dead, 
have no consciousness of our condition nor of any 
posthumous honors paid us, still while we live it 
gives us pleasure to think that we shall when dead 
be remembered with regard and buried amid sa- 
cred and beautiful associations. The desire for 
imperishable fame that nerves the soldier and in- 
spires the poet is an illustration of man's concern 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 305 

for himself and that little handful of dust he calls 
his body, when the dream of life is ended. How 
anxious were the Egyptians with regard to the 
preservation of their mummies ; how desirous were 
the Greeks to be entombed where the living could 
not forget them; and how careful are we to pre- 
pare places of repose where at last we may 
mingle our dust with that of loved ones in a com- 
mon earth. And how many and strange are the 
special directions that have been given with re- 
gard to the burials and tombs of distinguished 
men. Walther von der Vogelweide requested that 
he might rest where a leafy tree cast its refresh- 
ing shadow; and it was his special wish that the 
birds might be fed every day from the stone over 
his grave. Four holes in that stone were to hold 
the yellow corn for the heavenly choir of "feath- 
ered minnesingers." Alexander Wilson, the orni- 
thologist, just before his death asked to be buried 
where the birds could sing to him. John Howard, 
the philanthropist, wished above all things that a 
sun-dial might mark his grave. Humphry Rep- 
ton, whose "Landscape Gardening and Landscape 
Architecture" will always delight the thoughtful 
reader, was anxious that his last resting place 
should be ''a garden of roses." Over his grave 
beside the Church of Aylesham, in Norfolk, Eng- 
land, a wild rose-bush fills the summer air with 
fragrance. John Zisca had a grim delight in be- 
lieving that from his skin was to be made a drum, 
at sound of which his enemies would fly in terror. 



306 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

Jeremy Bentham left directions that his skeleton 
should be clothed in the garments he wore when 
living, and that, seated in a chair, staff in hand, 
he should be preserved in the museum of a medi- 
cal college. There are also many instances of 
this thoughtfulness with regard to the last rest- 
ing place in the literature of ancient Greece and 
Rome. Very beautiful are the lines of Leonidas 
in which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead the 
sheep may bleat above him, and the shepherds 
pipe from the rock as they gaze in quiet glad- 
ness along the valley, and the countryman in 
spring pluck a meadow flower and lay it on his 
grave. There is a lovely Greek poem that bids 
the mountain-brooks and cool upland pastures tell 
the bees, when they go forth anew on their flowery 
way, that their old keeper fell asleep on a Win- 
ter night and will not come back with Spring. 
A Greek epitaph invites the wayfarer to "sit be- 
neath the poplars when weary, and draw water 
from the spring ; and ever remember the fountain 
was made by Simus as a memorial of his dead 
child." Another Greek epitaph reads: "Dear 
Earth, take old Amyntichus to thy bosom, re- 
membering his many labors on thee; for ever 
he planted in thee the olive-stock, and often made 
thee fair with vine-cuttings, and filled thee with 
herbs and plenteous fruits: do thou in return lie 
softly over his grey temples and flower into 
tresses of Spring-herbage." How delightful the 
prayer of an old Greek: "May flowers grow 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 307 

thick on thy newly-built tomb, not the dry 
bramble, nor the evil weed, but violets and mar- 
joram and wet narcissus. Around thee may all 
be roses." 

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits derived 
from the thought of our common mortality is 
the liberation from fear which it confers upon 
minds that have long felt the oppressive weight 
of dark and distressing apprehension. Hundreds 
and thousands of our race are rendered miserable 
all their days by the lonely shadow of death. 
The Anglo-Saxon especially, who views the world 
through serious eyes and is never long separated 
from his conscience, is a victim of the tormenting 
dread of dissolution. This distressing alarm, 
which has in so many cases deprived life of all its 
sweetness, may be overcome and even entirely dis- 
pelled by a calm and reasonable consideration of 
death. It has seemed to many thoughtful per- 
sons that Walt Whitman has accomplished for 
himself and his readers something of the kind in 
that wonderful invocation to Death from which 
extracts have been already selected for the read- 
ers of this paper, and which is, as John Bur- 
roughs has pointed out, the climax of the superb 
poem written to commemorate the death of Pres- 
ident Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Door- 
Yard Bloom'd." 

Cardinal Manning has this to say about the 
well-nigh universal dread of death: "So long as 
God intends a man to live He wisely infuses into 



308 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

his soul a certain natural dread and horror of 
death, in order that he may be induced to take or- 
dinary care of himself and to guard against 
danger and needless risks. But when God in- 
tends a man to die there is no longer any object 
for such fear. It can serve no further purpose. 
What is the result? Well, I take it, God simply 
withdraws it." It is true that men who are long 
at the gate of death lose much of that dread of 
dissolution which renders so many lives wretched. 
Sometimes this deliverance is called "Dying 
Grace," and sometimes it is called by another 
name; but still the victory is to the man who ac- 
customs himself to frequent and natural views of 
death. 

In all ages and in every country men have en- 
tertained a reverence for the dead, and yet the 
opening of tombs has continued. In some cases 
the impelling motive was desire for knowledge, in 
others it was hatred of the dead, and in still others 
it was a desire to honor those who had made them- 
selves a name in the world's regard. 

However unattractive may be the twisted sack 
of bones that now represent the once beautiful 
queen of ancient Egypt, of whom "legends of 
passion were writ in pain," and whose name will 
be ever associated with that of the Roman An- 
tony in song and story, the mummy of Seti I. 
(1327-1275 B. C), which was found in the tomb 
of Her-Hor and may be seen in the Soane Mu- 
seum, is certainly pleasing to look upon. It 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 309 

helps us to believe what history records of 
him, that he was a strong and noble ruler who 
covered the shores of the Nile with beautiful 
shrines and temples, and who did much to develop 
artistic and literary excellence in the aspiration 
and attainment of his people. Dr. Ward, in an 
instructive book on "The Sacred Beetle," writes: 
"The only royal mummy that is pleasing to look 
upon is that of Seti I. His features are calm, 
dignified, and noble. His arms crossed on his 
breast give him the appearance of one who 
sleeps." The monarch's sarcophagus, which is 
one of the finest and most costly yet discovered, 
is carved out of one block of transparent alabas- 
ter and is elaborately ornamented in every part 
with the most graceful and artistic figures. 

The wooden coffins of the Egyptians are not 
all of them alike in either shape or decoration. 
The earliest are rectangular and devoid of em- 
bellishment, and have only a very short inscrip- 
tion carved upon the lid and in some cases cut 
into the sides. The lid was ornamented with hu- 
man faces constructed of bits of wood fastened 
to the coffin by pegs. Later gaudy colors made 
their appearance. Elaborate and extended in- 
scriptions, sometimes conveying an entire chap- 
ter from the "Book of the Dead," took the place 
of the quiet and simpler inscriptions that pre- 
vailed in earlier times. In the XlXth Dynasty 
coffins began to conform in shape to that of the 
mummy, and a well-modeled face, having eyes 



310 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

let into some harder material and wooden hands 
crossed over the breast, came to be a common kind 
of decoration. In this Dynasty the custom began 
to prevail of encasing the dead in three, and even 
five coffins, all of which were carefully and elabo- 
rately painted. Religious scenes, and pictures 
taken from the life of the dead man, came to be 
regarded as necessary; and these were painted, 
often at great cost, not only upon the lids but 
upon the sides of the coffins. 

After the decoration was completed all the 
coffins were coated with a thick yellow varnish. 
The art of coffin-making continued to develop up 
to the XXVIth Dynasty, after which period a de- 
generation commenced which soon resulted in a 
general disregard for those sacred associations 
which in all lands gather about the tombs of the 
dead. But in all the deterioration that came to 
the undertaker's art in ancient Egypt there never 
arrived a period when the cheap, machine-manu- 
factured casket of the present day would have 
been tolerated. There is now a feeling every- 
where prevalent that it is a waste of money to 
decorate a coffin that must be covered over with 
earth or consumed in the flames of a crematorium. 
The Egyptians embalmed their dead, and the 
coffins were deposited in large tombs beautifully 
decorated. We wish to have our dead return to 
the earth so soon as possible, but the Egyptian, 
moved by his religious belief, sought to preserve 
the body which he had carefully embalmed so 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 311 

that it might not decay. With all our thought 
of the resurrection, and with all the tender en- 
dearments of modern civilized life, we treat our 
dead with little respect. We see them encased in 
cheap, unadorned boxes often covered with black 
broadcloth to conceal the poverty of the material 
out of which the box is constructed. We see 
those boxes lowered into deep pits which, after 
they have received their sacred treasures, are 
swiftly and unceremoniously filled with loose earth 
and stones. The beauty of our modern garden- 
cemetery only renders more appalling to the 
thoughtful mind the revolting corruption that 
beneath carved marble and fragrant flowers 
awaits our abandoned dead. Cremation is a great 
improvement upon earth-burial. The urn is bet- 
ter than the coffin. But the modern rude casket 
is inexcusable when we remember the artistically 
constructed and elegantly adorned coffin of the 
Egyptian of three and four thousand years ago. 

The robbing of graves is not a new thing. 
Against it the kings of old Egypt sought to de- 
fend themselves. Abundant evidence is furnished 
by the condition of some of the coffins when dis- 
covered, and in not a few cases by the misplace- 
ment or entire absence of the mummy, that the 
ancient tenants of the tomb had been, in a num- 
ber of instances, disturbed in their long rest many 
centuries ago by grave-robbers. 

It is an interesting fact, and one that has oc- 
casioned much discussion, that while there remain 
to this day hundreds of elaborate and costly 



312 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tombs, many of them retaining much of their 
original beauty, there are hardly any ruins of 
Egyptian dwellings. There may be found 
along the shores of the Nile great temples that 
preserve in stone the architectural concep- 
tions of early centuries, but nothing of im- 
portance remains of the humbler structures 
once associated with the domestic life of 
the Egyptian people. The mystery remains 
such no longer when once the pages of Di- 
odorus are turned. "The Egyptians," he tells 
us, "call their houses hostelries, on account of 
the short time during which they inhabit them, 
but the tombs they call eternal dwelling-places." 
Their houses they builded of perishable material, 
but their temples and tombs they cut out of solid 
rock. The men who dwelt upon the shores of the 
sacred Nile in the early dawn of our human his- 
tory believed that after the lapse of many cen- 
turies they should return to reinhabit their 
earthly frames. To preserve the dead body from 
decay that it might be in condition for occupancy 
when again claimed by the immortal soul was the 
absorbing desire of all classes and conditions of 
men. The years of life on earth were few, and 
for their every purpose a frail and inexpensive 
structure was good enough, but for the vast 
period of time during which the tomb must fur- 
nish enduring shelter all the arts of the embalmer 
were called for. Through circling ages that no 
human intellect could measure those tombs were 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 313 

to be trusted to preserve the sacred inclosures 
committed to their care. 

The general structure of all Egyptian tombs 
was the same. Each consisted of three parts — 
a chamber or series of chambers forming what 
we should in these days call a chapel; a passage 
or shaft leading from the outer chamber to the 
sepulchral chamber; and the sepulchral chamber 
itself where were deposited the mummies. Men 
were more desirous of owning a tomb than of pos- 
sessing a home, and whatever money a man had to 
spare he invested in a depository for his own body 
and for those of the members of his family. The 
tombs of the wealthy were elaborately decorated 
with sacred scenes representing, in most cases, 
the occupations of their owners. In a little secret 
depository in the wall were placed the Ka statues ; 
the depository connected with the chamber of the 
mummies by a small aperture through which the 
smoke of incense could penetrate to the statues. 
When the tomb was cut out of solid rock, the 
inner chamber where the dead were placed was 
reached by a deep shaft (the deepest of which we 
have knowledge is that in the tomb of Bakt III. 
at Beni Hasan; it is over 105 feet deep) which, 
after the body had been deposited, was filled with 
rubble that the place of sepulture might be con- 
cealed. 

Every effort was made to outwit the grave- 
robber. Valuable mummies were taken from cav- 
ern to cavern in order to preserve them from 



314 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

sacrilege. Strange were some of the experiences 
that befell a number, and it may be all, of the 
distinguished refugees who were sheltered in the 
cavern of Her-Hor. Inscriptions have been 
found upon many of the mummy-cases and ban- 
dages that reveal the fact that the mummies were 
periodically examined by official Inspectors of 
Tombs, who renewed the wrappings when neces- 
sary and repaired the coffins. These Inspectors 
had full control and care of the illustrious dead, 
and could remove them, in case of necessity, to 
other tombs, and do whatever was required for 
their safe preservation. Inscriptions found upon 
the mummy-cases of Seti I. and Rameses II., and 
upon those of other Egyptian monarchs, made in 
marking-ink, tell how the priests and Inspectors 
had from time to time examined and repaired the 
casements and coffins and had re-decorated the 
hands and faces of the dead. 

In the Sixteenth Century another enemy of the 
mummy appeared in the apothecary, who main- 
tained that the substance of the mummy was, in 
one form or another, valuable as a medicine. 
French physicians used it in the treatment of 
nearly every disease with which our human race 
is afflicted. Francis I. carried with him wherever 
he went a mixture of pulverized mummy and rhu- 
barb, which he believed to be a sovereign cure for 
all the accidents, disorders, and dangers of life. 
Lord Bacon also held human flesh in an embalmed 
condition to be of great use in staunching the 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 315 

flow of blood. Boyle recommended it as better 
than all other medicines for the healing of cuts, 
bruises, and open sores. Lemery believed it to be 
capable of resisting gangrene. Shirley, the 
dramatist, alludes to the medicinal use of mummy 
in "The Bird Cage" — a composition of some 
merit, but with which few in these days have any 
acquaintance : 

"Make mummy of my flesh, and sell me to the 
apothecaries." 

In such great esteem was the veritable rnummie 
d'Egypte held that the avaricious tore open what- 
ever tombs could be found along the Nile, and 
soon an enormous trade in mummy was created. 
The dead were consumed by the living. The 
gross superstition which made such a species of 
cannibalism possible has not yet wholly disap- 
peared. The Arabs still believe that mummy- 
powder is better than all other medicines for 
bruises, and their mantey, which is a disgusting 
mixture of mummy and butter, may be had from 
some of the apothecaries of Cairo. 

There is still a commercial value for mummy 
which when powdered makes one of the best of all 
the colors used by artists. Every dealer in oil 
paints sells ground mummy which, when mixed 
with poppy oil, gives us the beautiful tint of 
brown that artists use with such effect in painting 
the wavy hair with glints of gold that give 
glory to faces of lovely women. Mummy is a 



316 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

costly pigment, but no artist can do without it, 
and those who supply the material, as well as 
those who use it, look with anxiety and disquietude 
to a time certainly approaching when the dead 
will cease their ministry of art and beauty to the 
living, and it will be no longer possible to buy 
mummy and grind it into the coloring matter 
which the old masters loved, and which a modern 
art-critic tells us turns to pure gold in the sun- 
light. It is certainly a pleasant thought that art 
thus gives beauty again to those whom death has 
despoiled. 

Perhaps there is not, after all, so much sacri- 
lege in the opening and even in the despoiling of 
historic tombs as some have imagined. There are 
no ties of personal relationship, and in most 
cases even the civilization itself with which the 
occupant of the tomb was acquainted has perished. 
What feeling of delicacy or sense of propriety 
could suffer from the investigation of an ancient 
mummy-pit or a tomb like that of Alexander the 
Great? 

IV 

The tomb of Achilles has been clearly iden- 
tified from ancient and reliable authorities. 
Pliny and Quintus Scamander indicate its lo- 
cality, and Homeric references confirm their 
statements. The tomb was opened in 1786 by or- 
der of Choiseul-Gouffier, who was at that time 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 317 

French Ambassador at Constantinople. Dr. 
Henry Schliemann says: 

"A shaft was sunk from the top, and the virgin 
soil was reached at a depth of twenty-nine feet. 
The upper part of the conical tumulus was found 
to consist of well-beaten clay to the depth of six 
feet; then followed a compact layer of stones and 
clay, two feet deep; a third stratum consisted of 
earth mixed with sand; a fourth of very fine sand. 
In the center was found a small cavity, four feet 
in length and breadth, formed of masonry and cov- 
ered with a flat stone, which had broken under the 
weight pressing upon it. In the cavity were found 
charcoal, ashes impregnated with fat, fragments of 
pottery exactly similar to the Etruscan, several 
bones, easy to distinguish among which was a tibia, 
and the fragment of a skull; also fragments of an 
iron sword; and a bronze figure seated on a chariot 
with horses. Several of the clay vases were much 
burnt and vitrified, whereas all the vessels were 
unhurt." 

Such is Dr. Schliemann's description given by 
him in "Die Ehene von Troja, nach dem Graf en 
Choiseul-Gouffier," but he does not wish his read- 
ers to understand that he expresses any confidence 
in the excavation. He adds: "No one of experi- 
ence or worthy of confidence was present at the 
excavation, and scholars seem to have distrusted 
the account from the first" (Bios, p. 65). Dr. 
Schliemann desired to explore the tomb, but as 
the owner of the land, who was a Turk, asked in 
advance for permission to sink a shaft the unrea- 
sonable sum of £500, the work was not under- 



318 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

taken. The articles found in the tomb, and re- 
ported as above, may have been placed in the 
cavity to excite interest and secure to the owner 
of the land a considerable sum from scholars who 
would be anxious to push investigations. That 
is a difficulty all explorers of ancient tombs have 
to encounter. In Egypt the word of no native is 
to be believed. All along the Nile modern an- 
tiquities and newly manufactured mummies are 
offered at every kind of price. And not infre- 
quently veritable mummies of the greatest an- 
tiquity are discovered by the natives and are by 
them concealed until such time as they can safely 
dispose of them at exorbitant figures. Miss Amelia 
B. Edwards, who will be remembered with grat- 
itude by all Egyptologists and archaeologists, de- 
scribes in an article called "Lying in State in 
Cairo," which she contributed to Harper's Maga- 
zine, the discovery and arrest of a famous Arab 
guide and dealer who was in possession of a royal 
tomb, and who had also a hiding-place where were 
found piled up thirty-six mummies of kings, 
queens, princes and high-priests. 

Of the tomb of Achilles Plutarch has this to 
say: "Alexander passed the Hellespont and came 
to Troy, where he sacrificed to Pallas and made a 
libation to the heroes ; he also poured oil upon the 
tomb of Achilles, and, according to the accus- 
tomed manner, he with his friends ran about it 
naked and placed a crown upon it, pronouncing 
of Achilles that he was a most happy and f ortun- 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 319 

ate person; for that while he lived he had so 
good a friend as Patroclus, and when dead, that 
he had so famous a publisher as Homer." He 
was even more fortunate, for after a life of 
hardship and adventure it was his privilege to 
die for the beautiful Polyxena, daughter of 
Priam, for whose sake he went unarmed to the 
temple of Apollo, where Paris slew him. And 
so alike in life and death he was a hero, cele- 
brated in lofty song and in the noblest story. 



The Tumulus of In Zepeh on the shore of 
the Hellespont is supposed to be the tomb 
of Ajax. Pausanias relates a legend current in 
his day that the side of the tumulus looking 
toward the shore was washed away by the action 
of the waves, so that the tomb could be entered 
without difficulty. The remains, it is asserted, 
were found, and were of gigantic proportion. 
The curious story is confirmed by Philostratus, 
who adds that Ajax must have been, from the 
bones that were discovered, a man eleven cubits 
long. The tomb is said to have been erected by 
Hadrian, who was at the time a visitor to Troy. 
Hadrian kissed the bones and gave them funeral 
honors. Strabo also identified the spot as the 
tomb of Ajax. Dr. Schliemann explored the tu- 
mulus and found nothing but pebbles and a few 
large bones which Professor Rudolf Virchow of 
Berlin identified as horse bones. 



EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 
VI 



Plutarch has an account of the finding of the 
bones of Theseus. How much of the narrative is 
of historical value, and how much is due to the 
primitive imagination, it is impossible to say: 

"Lycomedes, either jealous of the glory of so 
great a man, or to gratify Menestheus, having led 
him up to the highest cliff of the island, on pretence 
of showing him from thence the lands that he de- 
sired, threw him headlong down from the rock, and 
killed him. Others say he fell down of himself by 
a slip of his foot, as he was walking there, accord- 
ing to his custom, after supper. At that time there 
was no notice taken, nor were any concerned for 
his death, but Menestheus quietly possessed the 
Kingdom of Athens. His sons were brought up in 
a private condition, and accompanied Elephenor to 
the Trojan war, but after the decease of Menes- 
theus in that expedition returned to Athens and re- 
covered the government. But in succeeding ages, 
besides several other circumstances that moved the 
Athenians to honor Theseus as a demigod, in the 
battle which was fought at Marathon against the 
Medes many of the soldiers believed they saw an 
apparition of Theseus in arms, rushing on at the 
head of them against the barbarians. And after 
the Median war, Phaedo being archer of Athens, the 
Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were 
commanded to gather together the bones of The- 
seus, and, laying them in some honorable place, 
keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very 
difficult to recover these relics, or as much as to find 
out the place where they lay, on account of the in- 
hospitable and savage temper of the barbarous peo- 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 321 

pie that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, after- 
wards, when Cimon took the island (as is related 
in his Life), and had a great ambition to find out 
the place where Theseus was buried, he by chance 
spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with 
her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, 
when on the sudden impulse it came into his mind, 
as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there 
and search for the bones of Theseus. There was 
found in that place a coffin of a man of more than 
ordinary size, and a brazen spear-head and a sword 
lying by it, all which he took aboard his galley and 
brought with him to Athens. Upon which the Athe- 
nians, greatly delighted, went out to meet and re- 
ceive the relics, with splendid processions and with 
sacrifices, as if it were Theseus himself returning 
alive to the city. He lies interred in the middle of 
the city, near the present gymnasium. His tomb 
is a sanctuary and refuge for slaves, and all those 
of mean condition that fly from the persecution of 
men in power, in memory that Theseus while he 
lived was an assister and protector of the dis- 
tressed, and never refused the petitions of the af- 
flicted that fled to him." 

VII 

The sepulchre of the great Cyrus, King of 
Persia, was violated in the days of Alexander the 
Great, in such a manner that his bones were dis- 
placed and thrown out ; and the urn of gold that 
was fixed in his coffin, when it could not be 
wholly pulled away, was broken off by parcels. 
When Alexander was informed of the sacrilege 
he caused the magi who were intrusted with the 
care and keeping of the tomb to be exposed to 



322 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

tortures, in order to extort from them thereby a 
confession, and so find out who were the robbers. 
The magi, however, denied that they had any 
knowledge of the matter, and it was never known 
who despoiled the resting place of Cyrus. Plu- 
tarch declares that Polymachus, a noble Pellean, 
was the guilty one. 

Alexander died in Babylon, and there was some 
suspicion of poison. Great as he was, still his 
corpse had to wait the convenience of his mutin- 
ous officers, who allowed the body to remain un- 
buried seven days in the heat of Mesopotamia, at 
the end of which time the embalmers did their 
work. Still it was two years before the remains of 
one who had conquered the world and filled all 
lands with the glory of his achievements could re- 
ceive funeral honors. Ptolemeus received the 
body at Memphis, and later it found repose in 
the city of Alexandria. But even here the vicis- 
situdes of life pursued the dead, and Alexander's 
tomb was opened that the body might be shown 
to Augustus Cassar after his victory over Anto- 
nius and Cleopatra. The body was in a glass 
coffin when Augustus saw it, but the royal curi- 
osity was not satisfied, and Dion Cassius tells us 
that Alexander was removed from his coffin that 
the later monarch might pass his hand over the 
face of the dead. When the body was exposed 
to the fresh air from which it had been long pro- 
tected, the nose crumbled into dust. Diodorus 
Siculus tells us that Alexander's first coffin was 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 

of beaten gold, hammered to the shape of the 
body ; it was partly filled with aromatic spices. 

The tomb of Virgil is over the entrance to the 
old Grotto of Posilipo at Naples. The tomb- 
chamber is a little over sixteen feet square, with 
three windows and a vaulted roof. There are in 
the walls ten niches for cinerary urns; in the 
center there is a rimmed depression much larger 
than any of the ten, and in this it is supposed the 
ashes of Virgil were deposited. 

Travelers who visited the tomb in 1326 have 
left it upon record that the poet's ashes reposed 
upon nine marble pillars, but nothing is now 
found to suggest that such supports ever ex- 
isted. What has become of the urn? No one 
knows. There is an old story that may be true 
for anything we know to the contrary, in which 
Robert of Anjou is reported as concealing it in 
the Castle Nouvo, where it may still hold inviolate 
the precious dust that was once the great and 
beautiful Virgil. Some say it came into the pos- 
session of a distinguished ecclesiastic who died at 
Genoa. 

Virgil died at Brundisium, September 22, B. C. 
19. In accordance with an expressed wish, the 
urn containing his ashes was entombed upon 
his Posilipo estate near the villa of Cicero. Vir- 
gil's Posilipo property passed into the hands of 
Silius Italicus, as did also at a later day the villa 
of Cicero, the ruins of which extend down the 
road connecting Naples with Pozzuoli (Puteoli 



324 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

of Acts XXVIII). The estate fell into good 
hands so far as the memory of Virgil was con- 
cerned, for Pliny tells us that Silius celebrated 
the anniversary of Virgil's birth with more so- 
lemnity than he observed in honoring his own 
birthday; especially at Naples, where he used to 
approach the tomb with as much veneration as 
if it had been a temple (Lib. III. Ep. 7). Mar- 
tial has two epigrams upon the care Silius be- 
stowed upon the tomb of Virgil. 

A curious legend makes the Apostle Paul visit 
the last resting place of Virgil, there to weep that 
so noble a bard should perish without the knowl- 
edge of the Gospel. At Mantua, on St. Paul's 
Day, a hymn that commemorates the touching 
scene is still sung. Perhaps the Apostle's was a 
mistaken sorrow, and it may be he and the great 
Latin poet are now together in that blessed 
world for which we all hope. God was as merci- 
ful in the old Roman days as he is now. Virgil 
was temperate in his habits, pure-minded and 
chaste in an age of profligacy. He was kind, 
unselfish, and loyal to his friends. Perhaps the 
entire Roman world was not so bad as Juvenal 
has painted it in his wonderful Satires. Its life 
and literature were not wholly evil. Some of the 
best books our world has ever known came from 
the old Latin writers. In the funeral services of 
the Romans, and in the way in which they re- 
membered the dead, there was always manifest a 
deep and tender domestic f eeling. No doubt there 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 325 

were in Rome, even in its most degenerate days, 
loving hearts and pure souls that preserved upon 
the altar of piety the clear flame of spiritual 
aspiration. Thus believed Hamilton Aide, who 
tells us in a beautiful poem how a voice from an 
old Roman tomb uttered such words as these: 

"Oblivion quickly gathers , round our lives : 

The spade may strike some urn that tells of 
Fame, 
But of the struggle of that life survives 
Naught save an empty name! 

Our Race is passed away. At dead of night 
The Master called us; and we did his will. 
Ye, who through widening avenues of light 
Are gathering knowledge still, 

Who, to the Poet's accumulated wealth, 

Add, day by day, fresh stores that inward roll, 
The large experience that bringeth health 
And wisdom to the soul, 

Learn yet one thing: He who is wise alone 
Leadeth in every age His children home; 
And He, beholding, something found to love, 
Even in Pagan Rome." 

It may be interesting in this connection to 
call to mind the customs and forms observed by 
the Romans in the inurning of the ashes of the 
dead, and in the depositing of the urn in the col- 
umbarium. The nearest relative fired the funeral 
pile with averted face. When the flames had 
done their work and the wood and flesh were re- 



326 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

duced to ashes, the glowing embers were sprinkled 
with wine and milk. The bones, and in some cases 
the ashes, whether of the pyre or of the body, 
were carefully gathered and placed with fragrant 
spices in an urn, sometimes of great cost and 
beauty. Before this, however, the bones and 
ashes were folded in a linen cloth where they were 
left a short time that they might become per- 
fectly dry. The urn was sprinkled with old 
wine and new milk, after which it was ready for 
deposit in the columbarium, which had been ren- 
dered fragrant by the sprinkling of perfumes 
and the burning of incense. By the side of the 
urn in the columbarium or tomb were deposited 
lamps and lachrymatoria, so called, which were 
in reality phials containing perfumes, and not 
tear-bottles. Then came the tender and last fare- 
well to the dead. All present were sprinkled with 
lustral water, and the ilicit, or word of dismissal, 
was spoken. 

Nine days after the funeral there were observed 
the novendialia or feriae novendiales, with sacri- 
fices and a funeral repast to which guests were 
sometimes invited. These repasts were usually 
quiet and simple, but there are on record instances 
of great prodigality, as that of Q. Maximus, 
who, after the death of Africanus, invited the en- 
tire Roman people to partake of his hospitality. 
On the anniversaries of the birth and death of a 
dear friend, beautiful wreaths and flowers were 
deposited upon the tomb or taken into the colum- 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 827 

barium and placed upon the urn ; and every year 
in the month of February was celebrated a day 
sacred to the memory of the dead. 

Many centuries ago, musing by the tomb of 
Virgil, a Latin poet wrote these lines : 

"Lo! idly wandering on the sea-beat strand 

Where the famed Siren on Ausonia's land 

First moored her bark, I strike the sounding 

string ; 
At Virgil's honored tomb I sit and sing; 
Warmed by the hallowed spot, my muse takes fire, 
And sweeps with bolder hand my humble lyre. 
These strains, Marcellus, on the Chalcian shores 
I penned, where great Vesuvius smokes and roars, 
And from his crater ruddy flames expires, 
With fury scarce surpassed by ^Etna's fires." 

Petrarch, it is said, planted a bay-tree by the 
tomb of Virgil to replace one that was originally 
there, but that perished when Dante died in 1290. 
It was at the tomb of Virgil that Boccaccio re- 
nounced the career of a merchant and dedicated 
his life to the cultivation of poetry and to the 
study of literature. 

The Augustan Mausoleum at Rome was 
broken into by Gothic soldiers who hoped to find 
in it great treasure, at the time of the sack of 
the Imperial City in the year 406. It is said 
that there had long been prophetic warnings that 
the tomb would be violated and its dead cast 
forth to be trodden under foot of the living. 
Suetonius and Dion record portents that filled 
the mind with fear and occasioned anxiety in the 



328 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

hearts of men. The first ashes deposited in the 
Augustan Mausoleum were those of Marcellus, 
son of Octavia ? Augustus' sister, by her first hus- 
band, Claudius Marcellus. This young man, 
the Emperor's nephew, was his destined heir, and 
his death at the age of twenty-two, B. C. 22, was 
the cause of wide-spread sorrow. Twelve years 
before Christ the ashes of Agrippa, and one year 
later the remains of Octavia, were placed in the 
Mausoleum. After the deposit of the ashes of 
Nerva in the year 96 A. D. the tomb was per- 
manently closed. The Gothic soldiery destroyed 
the contents of the Augustan Mausoleum and 
scattered the bones of the dead. The ashes of 
Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, escaped, 
however, and the urn which contained them was 
discovered in modern times ; but what has now be- 
come of it no one knows. 

The opening of the tomb of the Scipios, on the 
Appian Way, Rome, in 1780, created great ex- 
citement. The most highly cultivated men of 
Italy were profoundly interested in the excava- 
tion, and Verri produced upon that occasion his 
"Notti Romane," which is justly ranked among 
the classic productions of modern Italian litera- 
ture. A sarcophagus was found containing the 
skeleton of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, Consul 
297; and near the sarcophagus was a bust sup- 
posed to be that of the poet Ennius, the friend of 
Scipio Africanus. There is every reason to be- 
lieve the bust is really that of Ennius, as it is 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 329 

known that he requested to be buried in the tomb 
of the Scipios, and it was generally believed at 
the time that his request had been complied with. 
Both sarcophagus and bust were removed to the 
Vatican by Pius VII. The skeleton of Scipio 
Barbatus is described as having been perfect in 
every way and white as snow. It was removed 
by a Venetian senator, who constructed for it a 
tomb and a monument at his villa near Padua. 

VIII 

The fear of being buried alive has occasioned 
in many minds the greatest anxiety and distress. 
So apprehensive have men been, that some have 
had recourse to strange and even repulsive meas- 
ures in their effort to render premature inter- 
ment impossible. Harriet Martineau bequeathed 
her physician ten pounds on condition that he 
amputate her head before burial. This some- 
what startling method of making it certain that 
every vestige of life had disappeared was later 
so changed as to secure to the doctor his ten 
pounds for the severance of the jugular vein only. 
She wanted her brain given to Dr. Atkinson, of 
Upper Gloucester Place, London, for scientific 
observation. When Miss Martineau made her 
home in London the only authorized supply of 
"subjects" for dissection was from the gallows, 
and as a natural result there followed the "Burke 
and Hare" murders and persistent "body-snatch- 
ing." With the passing of the Warburton Bill 



EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER 

the difficulty in a measure disappeared, and, 
yielding to the solicitation of her friends, Miss 
Martineau changed her will, but to the last she 
insisted upon the severance of the jugular vein. 
Frances Power Cobbe had the same fear of pre- 
mature burial, and insisted upon the same safe- 
guard. Edmond Yates left money to his phy- 
sician with the understanding that the same oper- 
ation was to be performed upon his body so soon 
as life was extinct. Hans Christian Andersen 
entertained a like fear and provided a like remedy. 
Bishop Berkeley and Daniel O'Connell left spe- 
cial directions providing against premature bur- 
ial. Berkeley directed in his will that his body 
should be kept above ground more than five days, 
and until it became "offensive by the cadaverous 
smell." He also directed that during the time 
it was awaiting burial it should remain unwashed, 
undisturbed, and covered by the same bed clothes 
in the same bed. 

I think this fear of being buried alive is one of 
the commonest of fears. Wilkie Collins was all 
his days in bondage to it ; he kept upon his table 
a letter addressed to any person who should find 
him in an unconscious state, asking for the most 
careful medical examination. I knew of a man 
who requested that there might be placed in his 
coffin a loaded revolver so that in case of prema- 
ture burial he might have at hand the means of 
ending life at once. A medical man requested 
that there might be deposited in his coffin a bottle 



AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 331 

of chloroform. Of course the embalmer's fluid, 
the chief constituent of which is arsenic, would 
ensure death even were the previous withdrawal 
of the blood from its natural channels incompe- 
tent to bring about that result. In these days of 
embalming there is little reason for fearing pre- 
mature interment. But once, no doubt, the dan- 
ger was great, and in the past dreadful accidents 
happened. In tropical lands, where burial takes 
place at once and embalming is rarely resorted to, 
there is still great danger. In the case of an epi- 
demic of such an infectious disease as cholera or 
yellow-fever, or after a battle where little care is 
taken to separate the wounded from the dead, it 
is quite possible to bury the living with the life- 
less. Great caution should be observed in cases 
of suspended animation, and it is well to allow 
the body to remain unburied, where there is any 
doubt, until there are signs of decomposition. 
Indian fakirs who submit to burial under certain 
restrictions and safeguards for a monetary con- 
sideration have the appearance of being dead 
though all the vital functious are unimpaired. 
We find something of the same kind in the sleep 
of hibernating animals. Bears pass several 
months in a state of completely suspended ani- 
mation. Some animals, after the winter sleep be- 
gins, may be frozen and yet retain life. There 
is no sign or group of signs that can positively 
assure us that death has taken place short of ac- 
tual putrefaction. 



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